The best people

Michael Caputo, the assistant secretary of health for public affairs, told a Facebook audience without evidence that left-wing hit squads were being trained for insurrection, and he accused C.D.C. scientists of “sedition.”

[...]

[Caputo] said without evidence that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was harboring a “resistance unit” determined to undermine President Trump.

Mr. Caputo, who has faced criticism for leading efforts to warp C.D.C. weekly bulletins to fit Mr. Trump’s pandemic narrative, suggested that he personally could be in danger.

“You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going,” Mr. Caputo, a Trump loyalist installed by the White House in April, told followers in a video he hosted live on his personal Facebook page.

  NYT

Do you have to be a conspiracy nut to get a job in the Trump administration?

Mr. Caputo delivered his broadside against scientists, the media and Democrats after a spate of news reports over the weekend that detailed his team’s systematic interference in the C.D.C.’s official reports on the pandemic and other disease outbreaks. Former and current C.D.C. officials described to Politico, The New York Times and other outlets how Mr. Caputo and a top aide routinely demanded the agency revise, delay and even scuttle the C.D.C.’s core public health updates.

[...]

Those reports, deemed “the holiest of the holy” by one former top health official for their international respect and importance, have traditionally been so shielded from political interference that political appointees see them only just before they are published.

[...]

Mr. Caputo on Sunday complained on Facebook that he was under siege by the media and said that his physical health was in question and his “mental health has definitely failed.”

I think we can all agree on that.

“I don’t like being alone in Washington,” he said, describing “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.” He then ran through a series of conspiracy theories, culminating in a prediction that Mr. Trump will win re-election but his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., will refuse to concede.

“And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he said. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing.” He added: “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”

[...]

“To allow people to die so that you can replace the president is a grievous venial sin, venial sin,” he said. “And these people are all going to hell.”

He has that backward. People were allowed to die to keep a president in office.

Somebody get the straightjacket.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 9/15:

Caputo has deleted his Twitter account.  Or...SOMEBODY deleted it.

UPDATE 9/16:  Caputo has been diagnosed with cancer.  What of the brain, you ask?

"After surgery last week at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, doctors diagnosed Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Caputo with squamous cell carcinoma, a metastatic head and neck cancer which originated in his throat," according to a statement from David DiPietro, a New York State assemblymember who is serving as Caputo's spokesperson. "He is now home in Western New York, resting in the loving arms of his family, under the watchful eye of Jesus Christ." 

  Politico