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Dr. Oz's Love Letter to Joe Biden Resurfaces

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Dr. Mehmet Oz had great things to say about President Joe Biden. And then he decided he wanted to be a senator.

Going for the Democratic Party nomination in his chosen state of Pennsylvania — to which he has tenuous links, at best — was a bit of a chore, given it was already a crowded field. (Plus, the Democrats already have their own celebrity doctor who dispenses dubious advice: Anthony Fauci.)

Republican, then, it was — and he’s done a good enough job of passing himself off as a credible candidate that he got the endorsement of former President Donald Trump. (Despite this, here at The Western Journal, we haven’t shied away from criticizing Dr. Oz’s record — and you’ll see why in a second. We’ll continue bringing conservatives the truth about him and other candidates of both parties. You can help us by subscribing.)

However, what happens on social media doesn’t stay on social media, even if you delete it. In this case, Oz didn’t, and it was a veritable love letter to Joe Biden after he was inaugurated as president in 2021.

“Growing up, Joe Biden and I went to rival high schools and both played football,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

“Biden went to Archmere Academy, and I played for Tower Hill, albeit at different times (He’s number 30, and I’m #71 in the middle),” Oz said, captioning a picture.

“Sports teach us about the sacrifice needed to unify individuals into teams. Rivalries push us to excel—they teach us about the passion and confidence needed to win, and most importantly, the resilience needed to re-enter the arena after failure. From one athlete to another — congratulations, President Biden.”



That’s not exactly a nice little congratulatory note to a guy with whom Oz had a very tenuous connection. (From the sound of things, the relationship was about as close as the best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris Bueller pass out at 31 Flavors the night before his big escapade, so I don’t think it’s pretty serious.)

Should Donald Trump have endorsed Dr. Oz?

Instead, it reads like Oz was trying to echo that positive vibe everyone on the left was feeling about Joe Biden on Jan. 20, 2021. The man was an athlete, a can-do kind of guy. He’s resilient — and he managed to take the presidency after “re-enter[ing] the arena after failure.”

Well, two failures. Oz forgot to mention it was two failures. One of which had to do with plagiarism.

But I digress. It basically sounds like Oz couldn’t remember the words to the poem “Invictus” (“My head is bloody, but unbowed”), forgot the title, too, so he couldn’t Google it, and just went with this instead.

Again, if this lapse into Biden-praising happened in isolation, fine. This doesn’t disqualify someone from running as a Republican for the Senate or being an effective GOP lawmaker. But the problem, of course, is that this isn’t in isolation.

For starters, let’s take COVID-19 policy, where Oz wanted us all in isolation.

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On March 17, 2020, Oz gave an interview with NBC News in which he endorsed draconian-style lockdowns like we were then seeing in Wuhan, China, to deal with the novel coronavirus:

“The Chinese numbers have dropped dramatically, which is fantastic news, and it’s also valuable for us to understand why they were able to do that. If you look inside of Wuhan province, they had a catastrophe,” Oz said.

But outside the province — which was quarantined in the largest movement of its nature ever, with nearly 60 million people blocked in that space — the country was relatively spared. China didn’t have the big spikes, the huge crises that Wuhan experienced, and it took the country in a very different direction.

“We just have to copy what they did, take their blueprint and repeat it here in this country … I think a week from now we’ll start to see the benefits of what many would call draconian actions, shutting down all public gatherings,” Oz concluded.

We all now know that policy was far more draconian than it was originally sold by the Chinese government. And while the current lockdowns in Shanghai have put the human and economic cost of China’s lockdown strategy on full display — as well as providing final proof this was always about power, not efficacy, for Beijing — even in March 2020, these were extreme measures, a complete abrogation of personal freedom. And Oz was enthusiastically cosigning it.

Nowadays, of course, he’s all about freedom, tweeting this on Monday:

And here’s Dr. Oz from the past to debate Dr. Oz in the present:

In addition to his issues on COVID policy, Oz isn’t exactly a staunch defender of the sanctity of life, having attacked fetal heartbeat bills and the pro-life movement. He’s supported so-called red flag bills, which let authorities seize your guns without a warrant on thin pretexts and, to top all of this off, hardly even lives in the state where he’s running.

But, you know, he played football. Just like Joe Biden, a guy Oz seemed to like a whole lot back in January 2021.

Funny how things change.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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