Since Michael Caputo was made spokesperson for the CDC back in April, he and his team have demanded to review scientific reports. Caputo is a former Trump campaign official with no scientific or medical background. According to emails reviewed by Politico, communications aides worried that the reports would undermine Donald Trump’s “optimistic messages about the outbreak.”
In one clash, an aide to Caputo berated CDC scientists for attempting to use the reports to “hurt the President” in an Aug. 8 email sent to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other officials that was widely circulated inside the department and obtained by POLITICO.
“CDC to me appears to be writing hit pieces on the administration,” appointee Paul Alexander wrote, calling on Redfield to modify two already published reports that Alexander claimed wrongly inflated the risks of coronavirus to children and undermined Trump’s push to reopen schools. “CDC tried to report as if once kids get together, there will be spread and this will impact school re-opening . . . Very misleading by CDC and shame on them. Their aim is clear.”
For example, the CDC’s weekly Morbidity and Mortality Reports have long served to inform doctors, scientists and the general public about the spread of COVID-19 in the United States. They have been, according to Politico, long published without fanfare. But when Caputo And team came aboard, they’ve tried 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.“
