Brutal Week Of News Coverage Exposes Mehmet Oz As A Fraud Who Is Wrong For Pennsylvania

Salon: Oz “stands to profit from investments in the exact companies he blamed for causing the price increases.”
Daily Beast: “Oz’s slow but steady descent into quackery”
Insider: “Misspelled the name of his Pennsylvania address”
Insider: “A systemic effort to hire unauthorized workers”
NBC News: “May find it hard to generate the big turnout that Trump had”

New reporting this morning from Salon and The Daily Beast exposes Mehmet Oz as a self-serving millionaire who “stands to profit from investments in the exact companies he blamed for causing… price increases,” and as a fraud who is willing to say anything as he “reverses himself on science for GOP votes.”

These reports follow brutal stories this past week from BusinessInsider and NBC News – and as the spotlight grows stronger on Oz by the day, it becomes clearer why Pennsylvania can’t trust him in the Senate.

See for yourself:

Salon: Dr. Oz invests up to $715,000 in companies he blames for skyrocketing insulin costs

• Mehmet Oz… has repeatedly criticized pharmaceutical companies blamed for the rising cost of insulin — but his recent financial disclosure shows that he has invested up to $715,000 in exactly those companies.

• Prior to announcing his Senate bid, Oz repeatedly railed about the rising cost of diabetes treatment, lamenting in a Newsmax op-ed that the cost of insulin had more than tripled over the past decade.

• But a personal financial disclosure filed by Oz’s campaign in April shows that he stands to profit from investments in the exact companies he blamed for causing the price increases.

Daily Beast: Dr. Oz Reverses Himself on Science for GOP Votes

• For years, millions of viewers tuned in to Oz’s Oprah-boosted daytime talk show for a medical expert’s take on the issues of the day. But now, the issues of the day appear to have the upper hand, as Oz abandons his previous medical opinions for right-wing political appeal.

• Daniel Summers, a Boston-area pediatrician and writer, pointed to Oz’s slow but steady descent into quackery as his fame increased, adding that this thirst for attention has only sharpened with his Senate run.

• “Throughout his career in the public eye, Oz has shown a distressing willingness to say or do things he knows aren’t backed by medical science in service to his own fame,” Summers told The Daily Beast, citing Oz’s promos for snake-oil supplements and unproven COVID treatments.

• “It’s only going to get worse as he tries to entice people to vote for him,” Summers continued. “Medical facts will take a backseat to whatever he thinks he’ll need to say to win. The hard-won credibility his expertise as a surgeon got him has been sold cheap for the favor of voters who’d rather be told what they want to hear than what science actually says.”

• Since announcing his Senate bid last November, Oz has walked back previous positions on a number of health-related matters, including gun control, abortion, transgender acceptance issues, and euthanasia—all of which he was for, and is now against.

• The falling dominoes have drawn criticism from Democrats as well as from within the Republican tent.

Business Insider: GOP Senate candidate Mehmet Oz misspelled the name of his Pennsylvania address in official campaign form

• Republican Pennsylvania Senate nominee Mehmet Oz misspelled the name of his Keystone State address on an official campaign form.

• Oz… who had been living in New Jersey in the years before running for office put down “Huntington Valley” instead of “Huntingdon Valley.” While there’s also a town called Huntingdon in Pennsylvania, Huntington Valley does not exist.

• The address listed on Oz’s declaration of candidacy form for the Federal Elections Commission is for a commercial park, not a residence.

• Oz’s candidacy stoked controversy early on in the Republican primary after the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that he used his in-laws’ Pennsylvania address to register to vote in the state last year, despite living in New Jersey for several years.

Business Insider: Dr. Oz says he’ll fight to end illegal immigration. A business owned by his family, in which he is a shareholder, faced the largest fine in ICE history for hiring unauthorized workers.

• In a Sunday tweet, Mehmet Oz vowed to “fight to end illegal immigration” should he be elected to the Senate, a promise that helped resurface the fact that his family’s business faced a record-breaking fine for hiring unauthorized workers.

• Oz… quickly faced backlash from social-media users who called him a liar and shared stories related to a fine levied against a business started by his wife’s grandfather.

• The tree-pruning company Asplundh Tree Experts Co., a business for which Oz is listed as a shareholder on regulatory documents, settled with US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in 2017 after a six-year investigation and audit revealed a systemic effort to hire unauthorized workers.

• The company, the former CEO of which has donated $12,000 to Oz’s Senate campaign, was sentenced to pay forfeiture in the amount of $80 million and an additional $15 million “to satisfy civil claims arising out of their failure to comply with immigration law,” an amount that represented the largest payment ever levied in an immigration case, according to the press release.

NBC News: Oz had Trump’s endorsement, but didn’t win in Trump country

• A closer look at the results shows that Oz actually did not fare well in places where Trump scored big victories in 2020.

• Trump won by massive margins in four of these types of locations: The largely rural types of Graying America, Rural Middle America, and Working Class Country, as well as the blue-collar suburban Middle Suburbs. … But Oz lost in the first three of those types and only narrowly eked out a win in the Middle Suburbs.

• In the case of Pennsylvania, Trump was heavily invested. He pushed hard for Oz and even visited the state and held a rally for the senate candidate in mid-May. That’s the kind of effort one would expect to pay off on primary day. By these measures, it did not.

• The numbers raise questions about the November general election and how many Trump voters are Oz voters.

• The new nominee may find it hard to generate the big turnout that Trump had from the rural parts of the state, which tend to lean Republican. Those voters were critical to flipping the state to Trump in 2016 and to Trump nearly repeating that feat in 2020.

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