Certain dummies on the left will accuse me of being hyper-partisan to the point of never bashing Trump or anyone in his administration.
This is despite the fact that I have criticized Trump and those under him many times, including this year.
Here I'm creating a thread to do it again.
It appears Health and Human Services assistant secretary Michael Caputo wasted $300 million on a series of COVID-related PSAs which won't end up running.
Here's an article about the situation from Politico, which does seem a bit biased, and also focuses upon some of the wrong things: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/1...rebrand-433578
The most controversial aspect of this situation is the list of 274 celebrities, whose politics and attitudes about Trump are noted. Many on the left are outraged that money was spent compiling such a list, and that HHS has no place analyzing the politics of potential ad spokespeople. More outrage comes from the belief that these HHS videos were going to play more like Trump campaign ads, and not nonpartisan government PSAs about COVID.
While I can understand the concern, these criticisms are very much overblown. It is true that a very high percentage of celebrities are Trump-hostile, and many are outspoken about it. It is reasonable that they probably shouldn't waste their time asking certain celebrities to make PSAs for the Trump-appointed HHS, as these people likely hate Trump and would be uncooperative regarding any messaging they disagreed with. Therefore, it is perfectly reasonable to come up with a list of celebrities who are both credible (meaning not Scott Baio) and not afflicted with TDS.
It should also be noted that despite this list being produced, they were trying to work with some celebrities who were known leftists, and only seemed to be specifically avoiding Trump-haters or super-leftists, which is reasonable.
My problem comes from the $300 million wasted. The article claims that they wasted $250 million on one communications firm called Fors Marsh, $15 million on another called Atlas Research, and I'm not sure where the other $35 million went. It also looks very mismanaged, as Caputo took "medical leave" in mid-September, and didn't really leave anyone else in charge of this effort.
Between that and celebrities who pulled out of making the PSAs after initially agreeing, it looks like this whole effort was an expensive mess -- reminiscent of the even worse $560 million Obamacare website which failed upon launch.
I don't blame Trump for this. He can't oversee these individual actions and expenditures by the HHS. However, it really looks like Caputo and HHS shit the bed, and that money went down the toilet.
Take a look at the list I linked of the celebrities. It's kinda interesting. Each celebrity is listed with a "demographic" they appeal to, which mostly tend to look correct, though there's a weird demographic of "superspreaders" (related to COVID) which I don't understand. How would one appeal to superspreaders, when people don't know they're superspreaders, and superspreaders have nothing in common besides the tendency to go out into crowds? Weird.
Some of the research appears to be incorrect, such as claiming the Robert Redford is supportive of Republicans (I've always known him to be liberal), and it makes no mention of Redford's hatred of Trump.
The celebrities seem to be somewhat listed in groups, as you will see several minors listed in a row, or several gay people listed in a row, and stuff like that. But it's also kinda randomly mixed. Reading that list really gives you an idea of how few celebrities are on the right (or even in the center), and how those few right-wing celebrities often have their own personal baggage.
I don't even understand why they would spend $250 million hiring a firm to do this. Can't they just call a few celebrities they think would be warm to this, get them to film some quick PSAs, and run them?
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Originally Posted by Dan Druff
