Connect with us

AMERICAN FASCIST

Calls Grow for HHS Spokesman Caputo to Resign or Be Fired for Doctored Reports and Paranoid Violent Conspiracy Rant

Published

on

Calls are growing for Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Michael Caputo to resign or be fired after he went on a bizarre Facebook live video rant Sunday, promoting dangerous lies and crazed conspiracy theories. Among them, warning Trump supporters of an armed insurrection if the president’s re-election is contested, saying he thinks he is going to be murdered  –and even admitting his own “mental health has definitely failed.”

Caputo’s unhinged rant came after a Politico report exposed extreme politicization at HHS and CDC, where Caputo has forced scientists to alter historically non-partisan weekly reports, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR), now focused on the coronavirus, to favor President Donald Trump.

A longtime political operative, Caputo in 2000 worked for the “Russian conglomerate Gazprom Media to improve Vladimir Putin’s image in the United States.” He also worked for the Kremlin inn the 1990’s to shore up then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the Washington Post reports.

Calling for Caputo’s firing are at least one US Senator and health experts. Even his hometown newspaper is calling for his ouster.

“What’s lunacy is for paranoia and political calculations to be coloring the dissemination of scientific knowledge during a pandemic. Caputo’s ideas about managing a health crisis need to be put out to pasture.”

That paper, The Buffalo News, points to Caputo’s “disdain” for CDC scientists, who, it notes Caputo said in his Facebook video, “haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants except for meetings at coffee shops” to plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump.”

“There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.”

Minutes ago Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called for HHS Secretary Alex Azar to “resign immediately,” hinting at the Politico report of Caputo’s doctoring of the MMWRs.

“It has become abundantly clear that the leadership at the Dept. of Health and Human Services has allowed perhaps the most important federal agency right now to become subservient to the President’s daily whims. So today I’m calling on Sec. Azar to resign, immediately.”

Politico on Tuesday reports “Top Democrats called on HHS to fire its spokesperson amid mounting scrutiny over his actions and claims.”

Among them, Senate health committee ranking member Patty Murray (D-WA), who called for Secretary Azar to fire Michael Caputo, “after he reportedly claimed that a ‘resistance unit’ of ‘seditious’ government scientists at the CDC are working to undermine President Trump,” Talking Points Memo reports.

“You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going,” Caputo said on Facebook.

“Remember the Trump supporter who was shot and killed?” Caputo said. “That was a drill.”

“And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he also said. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing.”

“If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”

Former Assistant United States Attorney at SDNY, Daniel Goldman, says “Trump must condemn this talk and fire Caputo immediately. This is a real test of he will deal with an election loss.”

Former DOJ spokesperson, now an MSNBC security analyst warns that Caputo has a security clearance.

A consortium of 13 well-known organizations is calling on Caputo to resign:

 

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

AMERICAN FASCIST

Audio: Trump Threatens and Berates Georgia Official to ‘Recalculate’ Election and ‘Find 11,780 Votes’

Published

4 years ago

on

January 3, 2021

By

President Donald Trump tried for over an hour to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The telephone call, which was described as “rambling” and “incoherent,” was first reported by The Washington Post on Sunday.

According to the report, Trump tried to convince Raffensperger to reverse the election results by both flattering and berating him.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” the president explained at one point. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

“Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong,” Raffensperger replied.

“So look. All I want to do is this,” Trump later explained. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” he added. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

On Sunday, Trump admitted in a tweet that he had spoken to Raffensperger.

“I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state “voters”, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!” Trump wrote.

The tweet was immediately flagged by Twitter as possible misinformation.

Raffensperger responded by saying that Trump’s claim was “not true.”

Listen to a portion of the telephone call below.

 

Continue Reading

AMERICAN FASCIST

Meltdown: Trump Falsely Claims ‘I Won the Election’ by Citing NY Times Tweet – After Calling Paper ‘Bad for America’

Published

4 years ago

on

November 18, 2020

By

President Donald Trump has attacked The New York Times dozens of times, calling the paper and its reporting “an embarrassment to journalism,” “Fake News,” “a biased newspaper,” “all the news that’s not fit to print,” “the Enemy of the People,” and “bad for America,” to cite just a few of the many selections.

But The New York Times was reputable enough for the President to use it as a source Wednesday morning, when he lied that he had “WON THE ELECTION,” and falsely claimed there is “VOTER FRAUD ALL OVER THE COUNTRY!”

Trump claims are false. He did not win the election and there is not voter fraud all over the country.

Trump was so angry that his top election security chief allowed a report to be issued saying the 2020 election was the “most secure” in history that he fired him Tuesday night.

Here are just a few examples of Trump attacking The New York Times:

 

Continue Reading

AMERICAN FASCIST

Trump Tries to Sow Discord With Video of Election Workers Legally Collecting Ballots: ‘Is This What Our Country Has Come To?’

Published

4 years ago

on

November 11, 2020

By

President Donald Trump in a Twitter temper tantrum tweeted a video that immediately went viral. It appears to show two election workers in an unidentified though publi street location, collecting what are supposedly ballots and placing them into suitcases/carryalls.

The person behind the camera, a woman, tells the workers she is “documenting” them. They do not appear to be doing anything wrong. At one point they ask her to keep a distance of six feet and note she’s not wearing a mask.

As they’re working, she continues to harass them, and they show her their ID as they continue to work.

The video has no date, time, or place, and Trump’s tweet provides no context.

But the President does manage to create massive concern and outrage by saying, “You are looking at BALLOTS! Is this what our Country has come to?”

His goal in tweeting out the video is to sow distrust in the U.S. election system, and by the massive number of retweeets and responses, it’s clear he has succeeded.

Again, he provides no context for the video. It could have been recorded last week or last month. It could be staged and fake. It could be real but filmed in another country. There is no way of knowing because Trump intentionally hasn’t told anyone.

It is pure propaganda.

That he did it on Veterans Day makes it all the more despicable.

The video has more than 2.2 million views in just one hour.

The video, it turn out, is real, but from November 4.

“L.A. County officials told Reuters that these ballots were collected on Nov. 4 but were deposited by voters on or before Nov. 3. They are therefore valid and will be processed and counted.”

“All vote by mail ballot drop boxes were closed and locked at 8 PM on Election Day. Ballots from all boxes throughout the County were picked up the following day,” Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, told Reuters.

In other words, there’s nothing nefarious or untoward, or wrong about what these two men were doing.

The only wrongdoer in this scenario is President Donald Trump.

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.