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

EXCERPT:

HAYES: "There is zero evidence it was manufactured in a bioweapons facility, just FYI. So that guy, that Michael Caputo, the one who thinks that a left-wing hit squad is going to kill him, that there's going to be shootings, he's telling people to stock up on the ammunition, who talks about eating the ass out of anteaters, this is the man in charge of disseminating public information about the pandemic. Now, it probably goes without saying, Caputo has no background in health care. He's a long-time ally of, yes, you guessed it, Roger Stone. In fact, he was mentored by him. And he has long worked to boost Trump, recently authoring the book called 'The Ukraine Hoax.' He’s praised white supremacists and alt-right figures, pushed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. While he purged his entire Twitter account, he's posted racist and sexist Tweets complete with the crude references to oral sex and Tweets like, 'I would never sleep with you, dog-face.' Cool guy. This guy isn’t just pushing this nonsense, this disgusting, paranoid, dangerous nonsense from his government perch. 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, it’s called 'the CDC’s morbidity and mortality weekly reports,' and it had, until Donald Trump, been apolitical. Think of it like an epidemiological newspaper version of stock charts or baseball box score, write-ups of games. It is a publication that informs scientists and public health experts about the latest data and trends in infectious disease. Everyone reads it in the world of public health, everyone. On Friday, 'Politico's Dan Diamond first reported that Michael Caputo and his team have been working to change the reports to hew close to the President’s more optimistic message. Quote, 'Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC’s finding, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports they said wrongly inflated the risks of COVID-19. Caputo's team also has tried to halt the release of some CDC reports including delaying a report that addresses how doctors were prescribing Hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug favored by Trump, as a Coronavirus treatment despite scant evidence.”