Michael Caputo Is Just The Tip Of The Bugf*ck Iceberg
The melt-down-ening of Michael Caputo continues! We need you to keep in the front of your mind that this is the official spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, who's responsible for the messaging from HHS on coronavirus and any other pandemics Donald Trump encounters and inevitably makes worse. We are not liveblogging the self-destruction of some internet rando. He's certainly not qualified for the job he holds, since he has zero background in medicine or public health, but he's not some internet rando.
Caputo made the news yesterday when the New York Timesreported on an absolute BLOWOUT tantrum he had on Facebook this weekend, after reports came out that he had personally been manipulating science reports from the CDC on coronavirus. Oh my stars! Caputo — again, the spox for HHS, not somebody's anonymous batshit uncle — said people need to go out and buy bullets for the upcoming shooting war, after Democrats start murdering everybody to take away Trump's surely hard-fought and well-earned victory. He said the Trump supporter who was killed in Portland was a "drill" for things to come.
He said CDC scientists were committing "sedition" against America Trump, by focusing on the science of the pandemic instead of making sure their messaging aligned with that of Dear Leader.
He said there were shadows on his ceiling and he doesn't like being alone in Washington, because of how he is probably going to get murdered. He said his "mental health has definitely failed."
Bloomberg reports that Caputo took his little meltdown to Twitter after he was done on Facebook, said journalists should be gassed, and then by the end of the night he had deleted his entire Twitter account. Did we mention this is the official spox for HHS, and not just some internet rando?
The Trump administration's top health spokesman Michael Caputo appeared to have deleted his Twitter account after a late-night rant in which he suggested tear-gassing reporters and tangled with other users on the site.
Caputo, in tweets from his Twitter-verified personal account, said "gas all of them" while commenting on a post from a self-described journalist who had published a video saying they were about to be tear-gassed. In a second tweet, Caputo described another Twitter using an epithet for a feminine hygiene product, adding "you have four followers."
Most of the tweets appear to have been sent late Sunday night or early Monday morning. Caputo didn't respond to an email and text message seeking comment Monday afternoon.
That's right, dude, DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT or the SHADOWS ON THE CEILING WILL DO IT FOR YOU.
And now HHS spokesman Michael Caputo has deleted his personal Twitter account altogether. https://t.co/ShLna2OmRn— Alexander Nazaryan (@Alexander Nazaryan) 1600105739.0
He mighta deleted his Twitter account — and his Facebook! — but he still has his job at HHS, of course. The Trump administration has total confidence in Caputo, who before this was most famous for showing up everywhere in the Trump-Russia scandal, owing to his long associations with Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. All the best people, etc.
By the way, Caputo called an emergency meeting today at HHS to say he is "sorry" for all the terrible bad things he said. (Fuck off.) He is also apparently meeting with HHS Secretary Alex Azar today. Will he have to watch the shadows on the ceiling at the unemployment office? Maybe, but don't count on it.
He's Not The Only One Like Him.
All of this is insane, but it's important to see it in context, which is why we keep repeating that this is the spokesperson for fucking HHS! But Caputo's deranged meltdown isn't far afield from anything Trump says on a regular basis,endorsing violence committed by his child-supporters, saying the election will be rigged against him, and suggesting that any scenario under which he loses is illegitimate. Roger Stone, criminal pal of Trump and Caputo, is literally calling for Trump to steal absolute power over America if (when) he loses the election.
On that note, national security journalist Spencer Ackerman has a long-read about a real rando on the internet who's pushing for the same sort of shit and worse, whose ideas take the derangement of Caputo, Trump, and Stone to their obvious conclusion. He's a former CIA guy-turned-absolute nutbag named Michael Scheuer, and as Ackerman explains, he wants a whole bunch of Americans dead. That's quite a fall for a guy who used to be one of the bigwigs at CIA in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. (Though to be fair, it seems he was always batshit.)
Here's how Ackerman begins:
Michael Scheuer calls Black Lives Matter a "terrorist organization" and a "semi-human mob." On his blog and his podcast, Scheuer rages against a widespread, treasonous conspiracy targeting not only President Trump but the fundamental character of the American republic. It deserves "punishment... we've not seen before in this country." Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year old charged with murder for shooting demonstrators at a Kenosha, Wisconsin, protest, is a "young hero." If America is lucky, Scheuer wrote last week, "Rittenhouse's necessary, patriotic, and constitutional actions will power the formation of militias across the United States." In July, he wrote that "loyal Americans know their domestic enemies, as well as their locations, in detail, and will be able to act swiftly to eliminate them and the threat they pose." [...]
"The only thing I would be upset about if it came to war is that not enough Democrats would get killed," he said on his podcast in July.
As Ackerman explains, dude is into QAnon, which teaches of a(n entirely made up) conspiracy wherein the Left is stealing (white) America's children and molesting them and eating them. QAnon is nothing less than the resurrection of the Nazi blood libel, and it is targeting the entire Left. Just this morning, we saw an old grandma idiot in Utah railing against masks because, in her words, "child molesters JUST LOVE 'EM!" This stuff has legs.
Here is what Scheuer would really like to see happen, as quoted by Ackerman. (We will not be linking to Scheuer's garbage website.)
"Personally, I would prefer immediate and lethal, post-trial punishment —by loyal-citizen firing squads chosen by lottery," he wrote. Targets included the "Kenya-born" Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, John Brennan, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Russiagate's Christopher Steele and leading congressional Democrats. Other hit lists include journalists, academics, "any police chief or officer" who supports police budget cuts, and "all medical doctors, teachers, and teacher unions advocating the continued closure of schools across the republic," which Scheuer sees as commensurate with the predations of Jeffrey Epstein and, allegedly, Ghislaine Maxwell. "There is no Constitutional protection for U.S. citizens who wage war against their country, especially those who enlist foreign governments to assist them," Scheuer judged—meaning not the "Russia, if you're listening" president, but Trump's opponents.
He also listed as "domestic enemies" in July any "journalists or doctors" who made fun of Donald Trump's loser obsession with curing (read: not curing) America of coronavirus with his magic snake oil Hydroxybonercut 3000 pills.
Like we said, he is bugfuck.
Ackerman ties Scheuer directly to his ideological allies, like Caputo, Stone, and Trump:
Counterterrorism experts have long since written Scheuer off as a crank. Yet Scheuer's advocacy of political violence looks disturbingly like a harbinger. Trump's one-time consigliere Roger Stone urged Trump to declare martial law and jail his critics if he loses the November election. Ally Michael Caputo, now at the Department of Health and Human Services, reportedly invented a left-wing insurrection on a Facebook Live chat. And over the weekend, Trump endorsed federal agents shooting dead a suspect in the killing of a right-wing protester. "That's the way it has to be, there has to be retribution when you have crime like this," he told Fox News, echoing a point he made earlier in the summer.
Trump's always had such a hard-on for Philippine dictator Duterte's street executions. He's hoping he can finally have some of his own.
As Ackerman notes, Scheuer said on his podcast that if Biden wins in November, Democrats would be "silly to imagine it's going to preserve their lives." Meanwhile, Caputo is telling his followers to buy bullets. Bill Barr gasses peacefully protesting Americans in the streets of Washington, while sending nameless stormtroopers to Democratic cities to attack people. Meanwhile, Caputo is tweeting about gassing journalists.
In one way, this should all be seen as self-serving. Dumb motherfuckers like Caputo and Stone have probably committed or been involved with more crimes than we can imagine (or than we already know of, ROGER) over the last several years, and it's dawning on them that truly, the American people hate their goddamned asses, and we're going to do something about it in November. (WITH VOTES, MICHAEL, CHANGE YOUR UNDERWEAR!)
In other words, if goodness and justice prevail, then the party is almost over for these fuckers. And while Joe Biden isn't running around yelling "LOCK HER UP" like a common tinpot dictator wannabe like Trump, his Justice Department will likely end up indicting and convicting many, many people, stemming from investigations the FBI is most likely already quietly doing. The "shadows" Caputo sees on his ceiling are the will of the American people. And they might be about to bite him.
But make no mistake about what we are now up against. They don't want a functioning democracy, they want a war, and they want us dead, even if it's only to keep their lily white asses out of prison.
Miles to go before we sleep.
[Bloomberg / Daily Beast]
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