Photo credit: Tami Chappell, AFP via Getty Images.

The Trump administration is reportedly redirecting $300 million within the Department of Health and Human Services for a massive, public relations campaign to “defeat despair” and tout the White House’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to Politico, the nation’s cabinet-level health agency will roll out an ad blitz, starring Dennis Quaid among others, that was the brainchild of Michael Caputo, the agency’s former spokesperson and vocal pro-Trump advocate. Caputo stepped down from the agency recently after a series of outrageous comments online and bizarre, conspiracy-laden rants.

The timing also suggests a political motivation is driving the HHS’s PR campaign, as Politico reports that the agency’s plan is to begin the positive public messaging right before Election Day. House Democrats have already signaled that they will investigate if Caputo or any other political appointee put pressure on the agency to burnish Trump’s image down the homestretch of the 2020 election.

But 10 current and former health officials told POLITICO that they have have concerns about the campaign’s scope, goals and even how it has been funded — by pulling money out of health agencies like the Centers for Disease Control that are in the midst of fighting the pandemic, rather than working with lawmakers to set up a brand-new advertising effort with congressional oversight, or drawing on substantial internal resources and expertise in running health-related public service campaigns.

HHS has defended the campaign and claimed that it has no connection to Trump’s re-election, but that has done little to allay skeptics’ concerns.

“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?” former Obama HHS official Josh Peck told Politico.” It’s like every red flag I could dream of.”