Mehmet Oz, a.k.a., the Dr. Oz, just announced that he’s running for Senate in Pennsylvania in 2022. Oz is best known as a celebrity doctor who was made famous when he became a regular guest on Oprah in the early aughts and eventually created his own spinoff, The Dr. Oz Show, which has been running for 13 seasons. Here’s what we know so far about this celebrity physician’s bid for election.
Oz announced intention to run for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania in 2022 in an op-ed that was published today in the Washington Examiner, a conservative paper. “During the pandemic, I learned that when you mix politics and medicine, you get politics instead of solutions,” Oz wrote in the Examiner. “That’s why I am running for the U.S. Senate: to help fix the problems and to help us heal.”
Oz goes on to lament America’s lackluster performance in beating COVID-19. “Although we had some moments of brilliance, such as the gift to the world of mRNA vaccines made possible by President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, many great ideas were squashed,” Oz wrote.
Well. There’s a lot we don’t know about Oz’s political stances, but in case it isn’t obvious from the 45 sycophantic name drop, he’s a Republican and he’s running for a Republican seat left open by the recent withdrawal of a candidate endorsed by Trump.
Oz mentioned in his announcement that pandemic America is not the country his immigrant parents came to or the country he grew up in. “We must confront those who want to change the very soul of America and reimagine it with their toxic ideology,” Oz wrote. Well, I guess I’ll wait to hear what Oz’s actual plans are, but so far, it smells like MAGA to me.
