Your tax dollars at work

The health department is moving quickly on a highly unusual advertising campaign to "defeat despair" about the coronavirus, a $300 million-plus effort that was shaped by a political appointee close to President Donald Trump and executed in part by close allies of the official, using taxpayer funds.

The ad blitz, described in some budget documents as the "Covid-19 immediate surge public advertising and awareness campaign," is expected to lean heavily on video interviews between administration officials and celebrities, who will discuss aspects of the coronavirus outbreak and address the Trump administration's response to the crisis.

  Politico

In the most favorable terms.

Senior administration officials have already recorded interviews with celebrities like actor Dennis Quaid and singer CeCe Winans, and the Health and Human Services Department also has pursued television host Dr. Mehmet Oz and musician Garth Brooks for roles in the campaign.

[...]

The public awareness campaign, which HHS is seeking to start airing before Election Day on Nov. 3, was largely conceived and organized by Michael Caputo, the health department's top spokesperson who took medical leave last week and announced on Thursday that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

And right-wing insanity.

Caputo, who has no medical or scientific background, claimed in a Facebook video on Sept. 13 that the campaign was "demanded of me by the president of the United States. Personally."

[...]

The campaign is indeed under investigation by Democrats, who have charged that the massive ad blitz is an attempt to boost Trump's standing on Covid-19 before the election and have unsuccessfully called on HHS to halt the contract.

I doubt they expected to be successful with that.

HHS has defended the campaign as proper and insisted that it will not be co-opted by political pressures. "There is no room for political spin in the messages and materials designed by HHS to help Americans make informed decisions about the prevention and treatment of Covid-19 and flu," said Mark Weber, a career HHS public affairs official, in a statement.

No room for political spin, eh? It's a Trump advertisement.

"CDC hasn’t yet done an awareness campaign about Covid guidelines — but they are going to pay for a campaign about how to get rid of our despair? Run by political appointees in the press shop? Right before an election?" said Josh Peck, a former HHS official who oversaw the Obama administration's advertising campaign for HealthCare.gov.

"It’s like every red flag I could dream of," Peck added.

[...]

Some of Caputo's frustrations about the way the pandemic has hurt Trump spilled into public view, particularly after the spokesman launched a new taxpayer-funded podcast at HHS in May.

"President Trump built the strongest economy in American history, and I think he'll do it again," Caputo said in the inaugural May 22 episode of the podcast. "They'll defeat the virus, they'll reopen the economy but who's going to defeat the despair?"

Caputo ended up answering his own question.

[...]

Caputo's team in June requisitioned $300 million that Congress had previously appropriated to the CDC.

[...]

The unusual arrangement has alarmed some department staff, who have questioned why Caputo's team is so closely coordinating the project while excluding the professional messaging staff at CDC.

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An FDA spokesperson said that the funding for the contract was provided by HHS and the contract is being overseen by HHS.

As part of the contract, HHS recommended that Atlas use a subcontractor firm called DD&T, according to spokespeople for Atlas and the federal government.

HHS identified DD&T "as a potential organization with the qualifications required by the government," Weber said, declining to specify who at HHS chose the subcontractor.

DD&T is also a firm run by Caputo's longtime business partner, Den Tolmor.

Isn't that interesting?

Two HHS officials said that Caputo had spent weeks extolling Tolmor's work, arguing that the Russian-born filmmaker — who had been nominated for an Oscar, but had no prior experience producing U.S. public health campaigns — would bring a fresh eye to the work and could execute Caputo's vision.

Asked whether HHS knew that Caputo had a longstanding business relationship with Tolmor, Weber said he was unaware of the two men's prior work.

Jeffrey Souder, who does not work for HHS but has held multiple roles for Caputo's private public relations firms, also has been included in the campaign planning efforts, said three individuals with knowledge of the planning process.

Tolmor and Souder did not respond to requests for comment. Caputo referred questions to HHS.

HHS did not respond to questions about Caputo's role in selecting his allies as subcontractors, but said that he had "nothing to do" with the selection of Atlas Research as the prime contractor.

Wait a minute. Are we just going to fly right past the "Russian-born" thing?

FDA's public affairs office did not respond to questions about who at the agency oversaw the selection process that chose Atlas Research, referring questions to HHS.

But three FDA officials involved in the agency's response to coronavirus said they were previously unaware that Caputo's team had used the FDA to help manage its new advertising campaign.

So...maybe they didn't.

Trump administration officials also have sought out celebrities who have said favorable things about the president or are anticipated to provide friendly conversations for administration officials.

In one video recorded this month, infectious-disease expert Tony Fauci was paired for a conversation with Dennis Quaid, the star of “The Big Easy” and the upcoming “Reagan,” among many other films, who had publicly praised Trump's handling of coronavirus earlier this year.

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Caputo’s team also has considered involving well-known figures like Dr. Oz.

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Public health experts have critiqued Oz’s praise for hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug that Trump favored to fight coronavirus despite scant evidence, and some of the TV doctor’s other pronouncements about handling the outbreak that they say are not grounded in science.

[...]

"The idea that you’d have administration officials in an ad that airs before the election strikes me as odd," said Peck, who managed the advertising for HealthCare.gov.

Peck also dismissed a question about whether his team attempted to put then-President Barack Obama or other officials in government-funded TV advertising for that president's signature health care website.

"We never tried," he said.

[...]

“I don’t know how you spend this money by the end of the year,” said a former HHS official. “I don’t know of any other campaign that HHS has ever run that’s ever come close to that.”

When you're lining pockets, it goes fast.

Before taking medical leave, Caputo had insisted that the upcoming ad campaign should be viewed as a bipartisan priority, referencing Democrats’ earlier calls for the administration to communicate more about Covid-19.

“I'm not doing anything more than what the Democrats asked for. I'm not doing anything more than what the president asked of me,” Caputo said in his Sept. 13 Facebook Live video. “As god as my witness, I am not stopping.”

Until somebody stops me, perhaps he meant.

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