Over the weekend, multiple news outlets broke the story that Trump's appointed assistant secretary of public affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services and his assistants have been watering down or blocking key reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention known as the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports. Not only have Michael Caputo and aide Paul Alexander been engaged in ongoing battle with CDC scientists over findings that contradict Trump's own rosy claims, during the nationwide COVID-19 pandemic, but they have done so while accusing CDC scientists of writing "hit pieces" meant to damage the administration—and the claims both men have made, in confronting CDC scientists, have been so broadly conspiratorial in nature as to raise questions about both men's fitness for the job.
Those questions are now going to be on the top of the agenda, because Trump appointee Caputo has responded to the allegations against him with an absolutely batshit Facebook video in which Caputo accuses CDC scientists with "sedition" for the content of their reports, claims an anti-Trump "resistance unit" is operating inside the CDC, claims he is in real personal danger of being killed by anti-Trump forces, and launched into a string of off-the-rails conspiracy theories that culminated in him urging Trump supporters to "buy ammunition" in preparation for a Biden attempt to seize the presidency from Trump.
Caputo, elevated into the role by Trump after his work on Trump’s 2016 campaign, says in the Facebook post that his "mental health has definitely failed," and there is absolutely no way to listen to his rant and not believe him on that.
As reported by The New York Times, the core of actual HHS "communications" head Caputo's rant was an extended conspiracy theory premised around the "deep state." In response to the release of emails showing his and Alexander's conspiracy-laced interference in the CDC's scientific reports, Caputo confirms he believes there is a "resistance unit" of the CDC that is writing (accurate) reports on the severity of the pandemic in order to undermine Donald Trump. But that is small-ball, compared to his other claims. Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Caputo went the full Alex Jones.
"You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going."
"I don’t like being alone in Washington." There are "shadows on the ceiling in my apartment," shadows that are "so long."
Caputo claimed that the Trump supporter killed during a confrontation with protesters in Portland, Oregon, "was a drill," and that "when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin. 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."
Caputo's avid recounting of a barrage of conspiracy theories is bizarre, but not entirely unexpected. It was evident from the weekend's reporting that Caputo and aide Alexander were premising their objections to CDC scientific reports explicitly on false and conspiratorial claims. Alexander objected strongly to a CDC report confirming COVID-19 spread among children and from children to adults, even a month later making the unfounded and egregiously bizarre claim that there is "zero evidence" that children can spread COVID-19 and that the risks were "essentially zero." He believed reports to the contrary to be "hit pieces" by anti-Trump scientists who wanted to "impact school reopening."
Alexander wasn't just wrong: his claims were ludicrously non-factual. School and university reopenings quickly sent COVID-19 cases spiraling out of control, after Trump's team scoffed at the dangers, resulting in hasty scrambles to shutter again only days after classes restarted.
It's not that Caputo and Alexander have been challenging the science, based on science. They have been repeatedly and systemically challenging CDC science based on false claims and assertions of anti-Trump conspiracies by scientists who present numbers that contradict the administration's dismissals of virus dangers. The news that Caputo is an Alex Jones-style raving conspiracy crackpot whose "mental health has definitely failed," in his words, now gives color to the charges against him:
He's not just one of Trump's most loyal administration allies. The Department of Health and Human Service's top communications head during a pandemic is basing the department's pandemic response on conspiracy-shouting voices in his own head.
Congressional Democrats have already announced that there will be a full investigation of Caputo and Alexander's interference in the Morbidity and Mortality reports. It needs to happen immediately—no, even before that. It's now evident that one of the key reasons for 200,000 American deaths during the pandemic is because Caputo and allies have fraudulently hindered and delayed the pandemic response due to an underlying belief that scientists were not trying to save lives, in warning plainly of COVID-19 risks, but trying to damage conservatism's bizarre, indifferent, and dysfunctional leader.