New HHS Spokesman Made Racist Comments About Chinese People in Now-Deleted Tweets

The new spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services in a series of now-deleted tweets made racist and derogatory comments about Chinese people, said Democrats wanted the coronavirus to kill millions of people and accused the media of intentionally creating panic around the pandemic to hurt President Donald Trump.

Michael Caputo, a longtime New York Republican political operative who worked on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was appointed last week as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at HHS, a prominent communications role at the department which serves a central role in the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Caputo, a prolific user who often tweeted insults and profanity, recently erased nearly his entire Twitter history from before April 12. {snip}

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In a series of tweets on March 12, Caputo responded to a baseless conspiracy theory that the United States brought the coronavirus to Wuhan, China, by tweeting that “millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters.”

He followed up at another user, “Don’t you have a bat to eat?” and tweeted at another user, “You’re very convincing, Wang.”

After publication, Caputo responded to CNN’s request for comment by saying that reporting on his past tweets is “fair game, dude. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me at all.” He claimed that he deletes his tweets “every month and I do it because it drives people mad.”

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Here are some of Caputo’s deleted tweets pertaining to the unfolding health crisis in the United States:

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March 12: Caputo tweets in response to the baseless conspiracy that the US brought coronavirus to Wuhan that, “Sure, millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters but some foreigner snuck in a bottle of the good stuff. That’s it.” He follows up, “Don’t you have a bat to eat?” He tweets at another user, “You’re very convincing, Wang.”

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March 17: Caputo tweets, “#ChineseVirus” 20 times in a row. President Trump in March began calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus.”

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March 18: Caputo tweets, “Double down on #ChineseVirus. Leftists lost the true meaning of ‘racism’ long ago. And polls show they’ve beaten this dead horse so badly that GOP, independent, and soft Dem voters ignore them.” He adds, “Nobody should let Democrats and their conjugal media popularize Chinese Communist Party talking points. Democrats + Media = CCP.”

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March 31: Caputo retweets a tweet that says “the Left hate normal Americans and they want us dead and replaced. Act as if they mean it, because they do.”

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