President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Tuesday afternoon that he will nominate TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz to serve as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The appointment is among a string of TV hosts — mostly from Fox News — to be chosen to join Trump's cabinet.
In a statement, Trump said the celebrity TV host will "work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex."
Though a household name due to his long-running “The Dr. Oz Show" (2009-2022), Oz got into politics when he unsuccessfully ran for Senate against now Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) in 2022, during which time the good doctor seemed to forge an alliance with Trump.
At the time, Scientific American wrote Dr. Oz should not be a senator or a doctor, noting that his misinformation had already tarnished medicine and would do much worse in the halls of Congress. "Dr. Oz has long pushed misleading, science-free and unproven alternative therapies such as homeopathy, as well as fad diets, detoxes and cleanses."
News outlets are quick to point out that Dr. Oz has no experience running a large government body like the CMS but that seems to not matter because, according to the President-elect.
“There may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again,” Trump said in a statement, referring to the words of Robert Kennedy Jr. who will, if confirmed run the Dept. of Health and Human Services.