New HHS Spokesman Made Racist Comments About Chinese People In Now-Deleted Tweets
Andrew Kaczynski, Nathan McDermott and Em Steck, CNN, April 23, 2020:
The new spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services in a series of now-deleted tweets made racist and derogatory comments about Chinese people, said Democrats wanted the coronavirus to kill millions of people and accused the media of intentionally creating panic around the pandemic to hurt President Donald Trump.Regarding the March 28 tweet, is Caputo implying Donald Trump is against capitalism?
Michael Caputo, a longtime New York Republican political operative who worked on Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, was appointed last week as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at HHS, a prominent communications role at the department which serves a central role in the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Caputo, a prolific user who often tweeted insults and profanity, recently erased nearly his entire Twitter history from before April 12. CNN's KFile used the Internet Archive's "The Wayback Machine" to review more than 1,300 deleted tweets and retweets from late February to early April many of which were regarding the rapidly spreading coronavirus.
While he occasionally weighed in with praise for public officials or more straightforward observations, tweets from this period are also littered with conspiracy theories and controversial language to go after perceived critics of the Trump administration. ...
Caputo responded to CNN's request for comment by saying that reporting on his past tweets is "fair game, dude. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me at all. ... I don't mind what you've done. ... [I am] now a servant of the American people and some might be disappointed, but my tweets will be different." ...
Here are some of Caputo's deleted tweets [CNN includes links to 39 tweets] pertaining to the unfolding health crisis in the United States:
February 28: Caputo tweets, "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: Caputo tweets, "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?" ...
March 11: Caputo tweets in a chain on testing shortages, "A lot of the panic is orchestrated by soulless Trump critics who seize every crisis as an opportunity to stop him. And fail." Still, Caputo acknowledged that the lack of testing was an issue. ...
March 12: Caputo tweets in response to the baseless conspiracy that the US brought coronavirus to Wuhan that, "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." He follows up, "Don't you have a bat to eat?" He tweets at another user, "You're very convincing, Wang."
March 13: Caputo tweets that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is an "*asshat." ...
March 14: Caputo tweets, "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: Caputo tweets at Daniel Goldman, a lawyer for House Democrats during impeachment, "Wow. I started out feeling badly for you. At least now we know the Wuhan Virus doesn't have any lingering effects on douchebags." ...
March 17: Caputo tweets, "#ChineseVirus" 20 times in a row. President Trump in March began calling the coronavirus the "Chinese virus." ...
March 20: After President Trump ripped into NBC News reporter Peter Alexander for asking Trump what he had to say to Americans who were scared of the virus, Caputo criticized the media for defending Alexander: "the media is showing their asses to the world again, wringing their hands over a hack reporter's treatment." When one of Caputo's followers pushed back and said that his question was legitimate, Caputo responded by saying ... "this guy has been a dick for awhile." ...
March 28: Caputo tweets. "This is how mentally ill many Trump haters are in this crisis" in reply to a tweet that says Trump supporters will "ignore scientific and medical experts" and "urge millions to die for the glory of capitalism." ...
April 1: Caputo called Joe Scarborough, MSNBC, and the rest of the media "completely full of sh*t."
He was appointed to his position at HHS just two weeks later.
4 comments:
The March 28 is a belter - just who is mentally ill ?
Question is, will Mr Caputo take his Detergent shot for the team .......
Sorry I meant that comment to appear here
How is it that these twitter-compulsives never understand that nothing they write is ever actually 'deleted'?
But these were written in the last 2 months, not 10 years ago!!!
He doesn't seem bothered by the news story, though, which is interesting.
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