Dr. Oz Attempts To Resuscitate Campaign With Attacks On A Stroke Survivor

The campaigns of John Fetterman (left) and Mehmet Oz have been warring over Fetterman's health. (Photo: Illustration: Benjamin Currie/HuffPost; Photos: Getty Images)

Mehmet Oz is an Ivy League-educated cardiac surgeon who became a household name by doling out (often questionable) medical advice to millions of viewers on national television. John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, is a guy who just had a stroke.

In another life, Oz may have been the doctor to perform life-saving surgery on Fetterman and guide him through his recovery, which has involved improving his speech and auditory functions.

But in this life, the celebrity doctor and his campaign have instead used Fetterman’s health setback as the basis for clunky attacks on Fetterman’s fitness for office and his lack of time on the campaign trail as he recovers — issues that have animated the final weeks of a critical U.S. Senate contest in a must-win state for Republicans.

“It is so difficult for physicians to understand how another physician could make those types of comments or behave in that way,” said Val Arkoosh, a former obstetric anesthesiologist who ran in the Democratic primary for Senate in Pennsylvania. “It violates our oath, it violates our ethics. And it’s just hard for me to understand and believe that he took the same oath that I did when we graduated from medical school.”

Each campaign has escalated the race around Fetterman’s health in the final weeks of the race to different effects. Oz, a Republican and once-venerated surgical specialist at Columbia University, has mocked his Democratic opponent for his near-fatal stroke — although Oz has recently tried to distance himself from his campaign staffers, telling a radio host he personally has “compassion” for Fetterman. Fetterman has used Oz’s attacks to paint him as an out-of-touch bully while dodging some of the more serious questions surrounding his health and his reluctance to debate Oz.

“He should just acknowledge that, as a doctor, you are going around making fun of somebody that had a stroke,” Fetterman said Wednesday during his first national TV interview since his stroke in May.

Fetterman returned to the campaign trail in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 12 after suffering a massive stroke. (Photo: Nate Smallwood/Getty Images)

Fetterman’s remarks continued a bitter stretch for the two campaigns. Oz called Fetterman a “coward” for declining to participate in a televised debate and called on his campaign to fire two “convicted murderers” — brothers who maintain they were wrongly imprisoned and who received clemency last year — a demand Fetterman said was “sad and desperate.” Fetterman has seized on every Oz gaffe, including a bizarre video about inflation filmed in a supermarket produce aisle and Oz’s evasiveness about the number of homes he owns.

Fetterman’s own health issues help underscore Oz’s record as physician who was once called in front of Congress to defend claims made about weight loss drugs on his TV show — and who also performed complicated surgeries and held a faculty role at a top university hospital.

Following the launch this month of “Real Doctors Against Oz,” Fetterman’s campaign released a letter signed by 100 physicians calling out Oz for “promoting unproven, ill-advised, and at times potentially dangerous treatments” in response to Oz’s well-documented affinity for miracle cures and supplements. In the early days of the pandemic, Oz wrote to the Trump White House advocating for a study of hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID and talked about the drug on the campaign trail after trials had shown it was ineffective against the virus.

Benjamin Abella, a Philadelphia-based emergency medical physician who signed the letter, said he was troubled by Oz shaming a person for a medical condition, something that goes against every tenet of their profession.

“His lack of decorum, his playing fast and loose with evidence and medicine and using his medical degree and credentials as an ATM for personal gain is disturbing. It’s sad. It denigrates the profession,” Abella told HuffPost.

Arkoosh, who leads the group of anti-Oz doctors, called the attacks on Fetterman “nasty” and “unwarranted.”

“This is not the kind of issue that you make into a campaign issue,” said Arkoosh, who is also an elected official in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. “The fact that he would continue to mock him and he’s been mocking him all summer, it’s really unconscionable. I would say for any human being, any of us could have a stroke.”

It wasn’t that long ago that Oz was hawking sometimes bizarre and unproven medical cures for aging and weight loss as the quirky but empathetic host of the “Dr. Oz Show.” But that persona has contorted as Oz morphed into Donald Trump’s pick to succeed GOP Sen. Pat Toomey.

Employing the GOP’s earlier attacks on Joe Biden — who limited his presence at big events during the pandemic and still managed to win Pennsylvania — Oz has called Fetterman a “basement bum” for taking time off to recuperate from his massive stroke.

Before Fetterman announced his decision not to debate Oz next week due to his ongoing recovery, Oz’s campaign delivered a mocking news release offering the “concessions” of bathroom breaks and “to pay for any additional medical personnel” for Fetterman, who speaks somewhat slowly and haltingly since his stroke. Fetterman said the sarcastic concession offer made “it abundantly clear they think it’s funny to mock a stroke survivor.”

Oz missed the opportunity to frame perhaps the most concerning revelation from Fetterman declining to debate Oz — the admission that Fetterman’s auditory limitations would make a debate format challenging. (Recovery from a stroke can take time, and Fetterman has said he’s been given a good prognosis.)

Instead, Fetterman took control of the narrative, going on TV to accuse Oz of being mean and aligning himself with the multitude of Americans in less-than-perfect health.

“When you look around, [you] realize that there’s Pennsylvanians all across the state that have serious health crises in their own life,” Fetterman told MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle. “And I don’t think anybody would want a doctor in their lives making fun of them or laughing at their circumstances. But I just happen to have a doctor in my life to do just that.”

Fetterman’s very online campaign has run with the abundant material given to it by Oz’s camp, including a viral video where Oz, looking like he’s new to both grocery shopping and food in general, searches for the ingredients to make a “crudités” plate. (Oz’s greatest sin therein: opting for broccoli and salsa).

Oz is hammering his opponent for declining to debate as Fetterman recovers from a stroke. (Photo: Matt Freed /Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via Associated Press)

Oz’s campaign responded to criticism of the video as out of touch and just plain weird with an even cringier statement to Insider: “If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly,” said Rachel Tripp, a senior communications adviser, to collective shudders from both sides.

Fetterman’s campaign responded in typical Fetterman campaign fashion by sending three people dressed as broccoli stalks to an Oz campaign event and posting the clip online.

Oz has tried to put some distance between himself and his campaign staff, giving him a veil of plausible deniability when a staffer fires off something nasty about Fetterman’s health that would sound even more vicious coming from an actual doctor.

“I have compassion. I understand. I’ll work with you. Tell me what I can do to make it easier or safer for you,” Oz told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt Thursday when discussing Fetterman’s refusal to debate right now. “The campaigns are hitting each other hard on these topics, and his campaign and my campaign staff are, you know, going at each other. They can play those necessary political angles. But I’m just trying as a doctor to meet John Fetterman at a place where the audience, the voter, can hear what we stand for.”

Christopher Nicholas, a veteran Republican strategist in Pennsylvania, said the Oz campaign’s execution of its debate attack was “clumsy,” but that Fetterman has been “ultra-scripted” and “very cautious” since returning to campaigning.

“It’s almost like they’ve got him under glass,” Nicholas said.

“I do think the health issue is a problem for Fetterman,” he added. “Because he’s not on the campaign, he doesn’t look good, he won’t do debates.”

Nicholas described the Oz campaign as launching a “frontal attack that wasn’t really well thought-out. I think they feel under pressure because they’ve been embarrassed a bit with the whole grocery store stunt and with some of the things Oz has said. They were trying to change the narrative abruptly without thinking about it. The gist of the argument was still powerful.”

CORRECTION:An earlier version of this piece stated that Oz’s campaign released a mocking invitation for Fetterman to debate after he had already declined. Oz’s campaign actually released it prior to Fetterman opting out, and it factored in to Fetterman’s ultimate decision.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.