Actor Dennis Quaid (“Breaking Away,” “Traffic”) ripped into “cancel culture media” this week after leftists bashed him for participating in a $300 million public service campaign ad about the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Things started when Politico reported that Quaid and other celebrities were tapped by the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services to create a $300 million ad campaign allegedly touting the Trump administration’s response to the deadly pandemic, pushing a ‘defeat despair’ message ahead of Election Day on Nov. 3,” reported Fox News. “Quaid, however, said that all he did was sit down for an interview and public service announcement (PSA) with the director of the National Institute on Health and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci.”
In an Instagram video, Quaid explained that “cancel culture media” mischaracterized his participation in the ad.
“I have to say that right now I am feeling some outrage and a lot of disappointment about a PSA and interview that I did with Dr. Anthony Fauci a few weeks ago,” Quaid said in the video, which he captioned by saying “NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPOLITICIZED.” “It is being used by the cancel culture media that I was doing a campaign ad and endorsement of Donald Trump and that I was paid handsomely for this by diverted CDC funds. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Quaid said that the PSA, among other things, highlighted the importance of social distancing, wearing a mask, and ways to combat the virus.
“The interview and the PSA were about raising awareness of COVID-19 and what we can still do to prevent lives being lost to this terrible, terrible virus,” he said. “It was about the importance of wearing a mask and social distancing and it was in no way political. In fact, Dr. Anthony Fauci and I both talked about it before that it was not to be political, as the virus is not political. I was not paid one penny for doing this interview and neither was Dr. Anthony Fauci.”
Politico initially reported that Trump tapped health department spokesperson Michael Caputo to create an ad campaign painting his administration’s response to the pandemic in a positive light. HHS, however, said that all PSAs in which celebrities are used are not politicized and contain vital information about COVID-19.
Back in April, during the onset of the pandemic, Quaid, while promoting his podcast “The Dennissance,” said that Trump handled the pandemic in “a good way.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I think the president is handling it in a good way. We see him on television every day, he’s involved, and the travel ban early on was a great idea – which he did in spite of protest about that,” Quaid told the Daily Beast.
Deflecting potential accusations of partisanship, the actor noted that he is an Independent who has voted for both parties. He also believed that this might be an opportunity for the country to reunite again.
“I’m an independent — I’ve voted both ways throughout my life, swinging like a pendulum toward what the country needed at the time — and I think this might be an opportunity for the country to come together again,” he said. “World War II did that for that generation, and this might be our defining moment of a generation. It’s going to be a different world, for sure, when all this is over, and hopefully, we can all be a bit more unified.”
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