President Donald Trump’s new spokesperson for the Dept. of Health and Human Services recently made racist remarks about Chinese people, accused Democrats of wanting the coronavirus to kill “millions of people,” called progressives “assholes” and “sphincters,” and has advanced conspiracy theories, according to a CNN report.
Michael Caputo was appointed Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at HHS last week, raising eyebrows among many who are familiar with the history of the Republican operative who has ties to another Trump associate, Roger Stone.
Caputo, who worked on the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, will have tremendous control over messaging, including on coronavirus, for the top health agency of the federal government.
“On March 8, he said a Democrat may try to inflict hundreds of thousands of American deaths from the coronavirus, creating a hypothetical scenario comparable to James Hodgkinson, the anti-Trump man who shot House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise and four others during a Republican congressional baseball game practice in 2017,” CNN’s KFile reports.
“Coronavirus is the Democrats’ new Russia, their new Ukraine,” Caputo tweeted. “And nobody will believe them except their zombies. But know this: The Dems’ strategy to defeat @realDonaldTrump requires 100s of thousands of American deaths. Will one of their nutjobs make it happen, a la Hodgkinson?”
A sampling of other tweets:
Feb. 28: “Bottom line, a lot of Americans have to get sick and die for coronavirus to tank the Trump economy. The Democrats’ only hope for 2020 victory is a sunk economy. They’re talking it down right now. But their strategy only works if a lot of Americans get sick and die.”
March 8: “Coronavirus is the Democrats’ new Russia, their new Ukraine. And nobody will believe them except their zombies. But know this: The Dems’ strategy to defeat @realDonaldTrump requires 100s of thousands of American deaths. Will one of their nutjobs make it happen, a la Hodgkinson?”
Caputo that same day retweeted: “Democrats are pulling for the virus to kill a lot of people.”
March 12: “Sure, millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters but some foreigner snuck in a bottle of the good stuff. That’s it.”
March 14: “Taking down names of progs who pick out of context phrases from Administration statements so they can ‘LOL’ for resistance cred while Washington deals with a pandemic. These are the biggest assholes. Hugest shitbags. Gargantuan sphincters.”
March 15, a conspiracy theory: “Are you kidding? Soros’s political agenda REQUIRES a pandemic.”
March 20: “I know you want millions to die so your addled candidate can stumble into the White House but it looks like you might be disappointed. How sad for you.”
Caputo “recently erased nearly his entire Twitter history from before April 12.”
Read the entire report, including more tweets, here.