DHHS squandered $300M on pro-Trump ad campaign that may never air

UNCjigga

Lifer
Dec 12, 2000
24,817
9,027
136
Great use of taxpayer dollars during a pandemic. How is this not a campaign finance violation too? This was the signature project of Michael Caputo, and its failure could be a reason why he went on a psycho Facebook Live rant a few weeks back.




They made a list of more than 30 celebrities including Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift and Billy Joel to appear in their ad campaign to "inspire hope" about coronavirus, but they ended up with only Dennis Quaid, CeCe Winans and Hasidic singer Shulem Lemmer.

The health department’s $300 million-plus, taxpayer-funded vehicle to boost confidence in President Donald Trump’s response to the pandemic is sputtering. Celebrities are refusing to participate, and staff are arraying against it. Some complain of the unstated aim of helping Trump’s re-election. Others point to an ill-prepared video team and a 22-year-old political appointee who has repeatedly asserted control despite having no public health expertise, according to six people with close knowledge of the campaign and documents related to its operations.

Interviews with participants and others in the Health and Human Services Department paint a picture of a chaotic effort, scrambling to meet an unofficial Election Day deadline, floundering in the wake of the medical leave of its architect, Michael Caputo, and running up against increasing resistance among career staff.

"This is a boondoggle," said an HHS official who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive department project. "We're in the middle of a pandemic … we could use that quarter of a billion dollars on buying PPE [personal protective equipment], not promoting PSAs with C-list celebrities."
 

Grey_Beard

Golden Member
Sep 23, 2014
1,825
2,007
136
I am surprised by this given the initial response to the pandemic. I am sure Jarrod Kushner is involved in some way, given his ability to solve any problem civilization has.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DarthKyrie
Feb 4, 2009
34,579
15,794
136
This administration is incompetent top to bottom.
Putting election issues aside, this should have been a slam dunk.
 
Last edited:

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
72,433
6,090
126
There was a time during the McCarthy Era when Conservative psychopathology first attempted to appear that actors who stood up against Republican Fascism were Blackballed for the rest of their career. This is the sane shameless and contemptuous evil they are only too happy to bring to life when it can be done consequence free. I think it is time to drive a stake in the heart of this conservative uninhibitedness and make any who openly support trump stigmatized as the filth they are for life. You love demonizing the other side by any means that you can, then suffer the same fate. It isn’t elephants that should have long memories. Pay for what you create. It is the only thing that will wake a conservative from sleep. The one violent act these clowns should have to suffer is the destruction of public reputation. It’s that loss that makes reputation their god and the thing that will sting the closing of all doors to its phony acquisition.

Why should anybody who supports that dirt bag Trump be able to hold his or her head up in public, after all the destruction he has done to this country. Any who live to avoid shame and act out to destroy the lives of others should suffer nothing else but merciless humiliation. But this should be done as preventative, not in rage.

The nice thing is that this happens naturally because we create what we fear. It is fear that creates evil. The hatred of others always rebounds redounds and reflects as hatred toward oneself.

Woe unto those who believe there is no Divine Justice. It’s baked into our genes. There is no hiding from shame.

And please pay no attention to the mad man who wrote this. Maybe the smoke from the fires is laced with something.