Remember that old saying, Al Franken and Fred Thompson walked so Dr. Oz could run? No? Just me? Oh well, I bring up those respectively disgraced and deceased entertainers-cum-senators because Dr. Mehmet Oz wants to be the new senator of Pennsylvania.
Oz announced the career change to his millions of Twitter followers on Tuesday in a video that looked like a TV set/doctor’s office as well as an essay (op-ed?) in the notoriously conservative Washington Examiner.
His biggest campaign planks seem to be COVID related. “Many of those deaths were preventable. COVID-19 became an excuse for the government and elite thinkers who controlled the means of communication to suspend debate. Dissenting opinions from leading scholars were ridiculed and canceled so their ideas could not be disseminated,” Oz wrote. “Instead, the government mandated policies that caused unnecessary suffering.”
There’s absolutely no mention of exactly who was in charge of this government at the time, but in case you need refresher, it was Donald Trump. He and his administration’s response to COVID-19 led to the deaths of nearly 800,000 Americans. What a weird thing to bring up as you seek to win the Republican primary!
The celebrity doctor who rose to fame after being featured on Oprah’s massively popular talkshow has said he would like to run for office as far back as 2007. But since then, Oz helmed his own talk show, where he regularly peddled pseudo-science to millions of daytime viewers with little incredulity of its efficacy. In his Why I’m Running essay, Oz writes, “Doctors are trained to tell it like it is because you deserve to hear our best advice and make your own decisions. It’s why I have fought the establishment my whole career.”
I guess that’s why he’s pushing hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 remedy in April?
According to the AP, it’s unclear why Oz is even running in PA: “Still, Oz may have to explain why he isn’t running for office in New Jersey, where he has lived for the past two decades before he began voting in Pennsylvania’s elections this year by absentee ballot, registered to his in-laws’ address in suburban Philadelphia.”
I suspect he will not win, but stranger things have happened in this country.