The Health and Human Services Department’s new spokesman deleted a slew of tweets that contained derogatory comments about the Chinese in relation to the coronavirus pandemic.
Michael Caputo, a longtime GOP political operative who worked on President Trump’s 2016 campaign, was appointed to be HHS’s assistant secretary for public affairs last week.
All of Caputo’s tweets that predate April 12, days before HHS Secretary Alex Azar confirmed his appointment, have been deleted, but many of them, including racist remarks about Chinese people, were reported Thursday by CNN using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
In these tweets, Caputo claimed Democrats sought a high death toll from the virus and said the media was intentionally reporting in a way that would provoke public panic.
On March 12, he tweeted that “millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters.” He responded to subsequent replies with, “Don’t you have a bat to eat?” and, “You’re very convincing, Wang” to another user. The coronavirus outbreak originated in China in late 2019, and the earliest known cases have been linked to a wet market in Wuhan.
Taking aim at Democrats, Caputo said they hoped for thousands of fatalities and an economic crash during the coronavirus outbreak to ensure the president won’t win reelection.
“Bottom line, a lot of Americans have to get sick and die for coronavirus to tank the Trump economy,” Caputo tweeted at the end of February. “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.” He added in another tweet, “For the Democrat 2020 victory strategy to work, 100,000+ Americans have to die. For the Democrat 2020 victory strategy to work, you have to believe the media. Media literacy is more vital now than ever. Question everything – smell the BS – start by doubting anonymous sources.”
Caputo was interviewed by investigators during special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into possible election interference coordinated between the Trump campaign and Russia and testified before Congress. He adamantly denied there was collusion between the Trump team and the Kremlin, and Mueller later issued a report that did not find a criminal conspiracy.
