Chris Hayes Blasts ‘Dangerous Crank’ HHS Spox Michael Caputo: Working to ‘Actively Manipulate’ CDC Reports

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes opened his show Monday night going after top Health and Human Services spokesman Michael Caputo for reporting on the altering of CDC coronavirus reports and a video he posted after that reporting accusing government scientists of “sedition.”

To briefly recap, last week Politico reported that emails from the communications team at HHS to the CDC “openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump’s optimistic messages about the outbreak”:

[S]ince Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the Health and Human Services department’s new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump’s statements, including the president’s claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.

Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC’s findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior, according to the individuals familiar with the situation and emails reviewed by POLITICO.

After that report, Caputo took to Facebook to say, per the New York Times, that CDC scientists “‘haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants except for meetings at coffee shops’ to plot ‘how they’re going to attack Donald Trump next,'” and that “there are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.” He “suggested that he personally could be in danger from opponents of the administration” and said that if Trump wins in November, Joe Biden won’t concede, “and when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin.”

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

Hayes started his show telling viewers, “The top ranking official at the department in charge of combatting the pandemic… is a dangerous crank who is undermining science and raving about delusional conspiracy theories.”

He reviewed Caputo’s comments and said his “ravings” aren’t a surprise, saying Caputo has pushed “disgusting, paranoid, dangerous nonsense” before but now it’s coming from someone in government.

“He is, in fact, actively working to manipulate what the CDC tells the public about the pandemic in what is arguably the single most important public health publication in the world.”

Hayes spoke with Politico reporter Dan Diamond, who broke the news of the interference in CDC reports. Hayes said, “I think some of your reporting suggests the match between this guy in the midst of this moment when public information is so vital and important in this agency.”

“He would not be the choice by public health experts to lead public health information during a pandemic,” Diamond said. He said the president was trying to impose some order at HHS and that “there was a theory in the white house that Secretary Azar was perhaps leaking unflattering information” about the the president. So Trump turned to Caputo and he then pushed multiple agencies to “try and line up more with the president’s message on the outbreak.”

You can watch above, via MSNBC.