Dennis Quaid, star of The Right Stuff, Great Balls of Fire!, Dragonheart, and last year’s Midway, is one of the celebrities known to be part of a fast-tracked ad blitz concerning Covid-19 created at the direct order of President Donald Trump, according to a report by Politico. He’ll be joined by gospel singer CeCe Winans, and the report adds that the campaign also approached TV doc Mehmet Oz and country star Garth Brooks.
The Health and Human Services Department has initiated what some budget documents call an “immediate surge in public advertising,” with a goal to get the material out prior to the election. The push was “demanded of me by the president of the United States, personally,” according to Michael Caputo, the Trump aide who stepped down from his HHS spokesperson position on Sept 16 after being diagnosed with cancer.
Among the primary goals, three HHS officials told Politico, was to combat the media’s fixation on bad news. “Defeating despair” and “restoring hope” were also cited as aims.
The $300 million in funding was pulled from an amount previously allocated to the Centers for Disease Control. The CDC has had little say in the campaign, according to Politico’s report.
A $15 million contract was given to a group called Atlas Research, with the recommendation they employ a subcontractor called DD&T. DD&T is a firm run by Den Tolmor, Caputo’s longtime business partner, with whom he has launched a streaming platform.
When asked about the Tolmor-Caputo connection, HHS public affairs official Mark Weber said he had no prior knowledge of their business dealings.
Caputo, prior to stepping down from his position, claimed that scientists “deep in the bowels of the CDC have given up science and become political animals.” He also made claims about nationwide Antifa training squads and had previously come under scrutiny for repeatedly referring to Covid-19 as “the China virus.” As he exited his position he implored his soon-to-be-former-staffers to listen to the Grateful Dead.
Whether other celebrities will appear in the ads remains to be seen. (Dr. Oz initially seemed on board with Trump’s fascination with hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus medicine.) In an interview with The Daily Beast in April, Dennis Quaid said that President Trump was “doing a good job” with handling the coronavirus crisis, and seemed quick to blame the state of New York’s need to share ventilators during the peak of the pandemic since they had a chance to buy them at a good price two years prior.
Singer CeCe Winans made a statement on her social media channels after Politico’s report was published, saying her taped conversation with Surgeon General Jerome Adams focused on prevention, and was not political.
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