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Dr. Oz became a household name thanks to Oprah Winfrey, who introduced the heart surgeon-turned-TV host to the viewers of her talk show.
Now that Dr. Mehmet Oz has thrown his hat into the political arena, running for a Senate seat in the state of Pennsylvania, Winfrey is being asked to comment about his campaign.
Oz’s campaign has been embroiled in controversy from the start, with the New York Times reporting on his “long history of dispensing dubious medical advice on his daytime show and on Fox News,” ranging from his promotion of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 (which has been debunked) to his embrace of dubious pseudo-medicine such as “magic” weight-loss pills.
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Approached for comment, Winfrey didn’t exactly offer a ringing endorsement of her onetime protege.
“One of the great things about our democracy is that every citizen can decide to run for public office,” Winfrey told New York magazine in a statement from her spokeswoman, Nicole Nichols.
“Mehmet Oz has made that decision,” the statement added. “And now it’s up to the residents of Pennsylvania to decide who will represent them.”
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Dr. Oz Announces Run For U.S. Senate Seat In Pennsylvania: ‘The Right Thing To Do’
Dr. Oz announced his candidacy for Senate in mid-November, running as a Republican for the seat being vacated by retiring Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey.
“Today, America’s heartbeat is in a code red in need of a defibrillator to shock it back to life,” he wrote on his website. “Many of us feel like we’re in the adjacent operating room, armed with insights and already scrubbed up but reluctant to leave our quiet, serene setting for the chaos next door. But for me, stepping into the political arena is the right thing to do.”
