Donald Trump’s appearance on Dr. Oz was surreal — and disturbing
Donald Trump’s appearance on The Dr. Oz Show Thursday merged the worst of Trump’s reality television showmanship with the worst of Dr. Oz’s made-for-TV medical schtick.
The key moment was when "America’s doctor" asked Trump: "If your health is as strong as it seems from your review of systems, why not share your medical records?"
The 70-year-old Republican presidential candidate looked at the audience and said, "Well, I have really no problem doing it. I have it right here. Should I do it? I don’t care. Should I do it?"
Trump then pulled two papers out of his breast pocket, and handed them to Oz. At this point, we — the audience — are meant to believe that these are real medical documents, and that Oz is shocked the presidential front runner is cracking open his personal health.
Oz calls the two papers "comprehensive" — we’re meant to see this gesture as one of transparency, and that the TV doctor is the trustworthy filter through which medical information can be relayed to the public. But, of course, The Dr. Oz Show has a history of deviating from reality and medical science.
What follows is even more surreal: Oz does a made-for-TV physical of Trump. No actual exams, no hands laid on the patient, no verification of the patient’s data. Just a series of questions, and the two pieces of paper from Trump — authored by Dr. Harold Bornstein (the same doctor who previously wrote that Trump would be "the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency" and a letter today boasting of Trump’s "excellent physical health.")
That’s enough for America’s doctor to stamp his seal of approval on Trump’s health. "If a patient of mine had these records," Oz says, "I’d be very happy and I’d send them on their way."
If Trump and Bornstein are to be believed, the candidate is indeed in very good health for his age. He takes a statin to lower his cholesterol, but his cholesterol and blood pressure are under control. He said he’s had no skin issues, no history of cancer. Oz can hardly contain his excitement when he reads out Trump’s testosterone level: "441 which is actually -- it's good," Oz says with a smile.
At 6’3" and 236 pounds, Trump’s greatest health fault is that he is overweight. Like many Americans, he doesn’t like to workout, and he favors junk food. But otherwise, the health picture presented on TV is something to envy. "I had my appendix out when I was 11," Trump says, "and that was the last time I was in a hospital."
Trump’s post-fact politics meet Oz’s medical misinformation showmanship
No doubt the show was comedy gold. No doubt it titillated and entertained. I must admit that I couldn’t wait to see the episode myself, and spent the last few days imagining what would come of this meeting.
But there is a deeper significance here that shouldn’t be missed: The embodiment of this post-factual era, Donald Trump, met the embodiment of medical misinformation today. On TV. And the stakes aren’t just the usual Dr. Oz high-jinx — misleading statements about weight loss supplements or detox regiments — they could influence the Presidential race.
Like a good piece of theater, this collision shouldn’t just entertain us; it should disquiet us, too.
Politicians have never been known for their honesty, but Trump has taken pants-on-fire lying to a whole new level, ushering in a new era of fact checking in journalism. As Vox’s Tara Golshan explained, "Fully 71 percent of PolitiFact’s 245 fact-checks on Trump so far have received a ‘mostly false,’ ‘false’ or ‘pants on fire’ rating." That eclipses Hillary Clinton’s 28 percent rating, and surpasses the ratings of all other politicians reviewed on the site.
Trump has demonstrated a complete lack of appreciation about how science works, and scientific facts. Think global warming is real? Not Trump. Don’t vaccines save kids’ lives? Trump says they hurt children and cause autism. It’s no surprise that, if elected, Trump has also signaled he’d cut spending on health research.
He’s also been called "the least transparent major presidential nominee in modern history" as the first nominee since 1976 to fail to release his tax records, among other transparency transgressions. Now, he’s used daytime TV to release, or say he’s released, medical results. (To be clear: The democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has also been under pressure for her lack of transparency during this campaign.)
If Trump has gone from TV star to surreal presidential candidate, Dr. Oz has gone the other way — from highly-credentialed doctor to surreal TV star.
These men are the personification of not just bull shitting to the public but getting away with bull shitting — and profiting off of it.
A gifted researcher and cardiothoracic surgeon, after a few years on TV, Oz went rogue. Though he had the potential to be a voice of reason in this moment of confusion about health, he’s had a history of leading America adrift, trumpeting homeopathy, discredited research about GMOs, and reiki — or "energy medicine" — as a useful addition in the operating room. He’s also given his platform to vaccine deniers, and fear-mongering pseudoscience purveyors like the Food Babe (known to scientists as "the Jenny McCarthy of food").
At his nadir, Oz was called before Senate subcommittee on consumer protection, and asked to explain his use of "flowery" language to champion weight-loss fixes that don't actually work. As Sen. Claire McCaskill put it, "The scientific community is almost monolithic against you in terms of the efficacy of the three products you called 'miracles.'"
In his TV last season, Oz seemed to have turned things around. He was featuring more science on the show, and even debunking medical myths.
But the Trump episode demonstrates a disregard for both the truth and Oz’s audience.
"I wanted to try to help bring some clarity to the health of the candidates." Oz said this morning on the Today Show. He argued that "we’re a much more informed country today than we were yesterday about the health of our candidates" and that the Trump appearance on his show was was "very logical" since he could add context instead of just putting the results in a newspaper for people to see themselves.
Oz doing this absurd, conflict-ridden job on his show is not better for the public and democracy — unless reality is now reality TV.