Trump has picked Dr. Oz, a TV doctor, to be head of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. What’s next? Cookie Monster over FDA?

Omigod. I just saw that. But Cookie Monster is too sane a choice for the FDA, thinking his buddy Hannibal Lecter would be a more likely choice.

Dr. Oz is a goddamn quack. Lovely.

I think some of these choices a throwaway choices who Trump knows will never get approved by the senate. But Trump does this as red meat for the MAGA sheep to eat.

Margorie Taylor Greene to head The Department Of Education.

I believe that Elon Musk got a cabinet position too. With a mandate to eliminate government waste.

Putin as the head of the CIA.

The president-elect, in pushing for recess appointments, is asking the Senate to abdicate its constitutional duty to either confirm or reject executive branch nominees.
Surprise, surprise, surprise!

This man has zero care for the constitution or democracy.

Let’s see, General Sherman will be brought back to head up Housing and Urban Development.

Oy. I never was a fan of Dr. Oz.

I think Trump thinks it doesn’t matter who is puts in charge of these departments.

By the way he was a cardiothoracic surgeon and was a professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Columbia University.

He is an MD and has an MBA.

He’s Muslim too.

Dr. Oz is one of those EVIL Republicans. That’s the real reason he is disliked.

Dr. Oz didn’t just play a doctor on TV.

From 1986 to 2001 he was a thoracic surgeon at Columbia University Irvine Medical Center then he was a professor of surgery at Columbia University and retired in 2018 (“professor emeritus” to honor his service and leadership).

Sorry for not being humorous.

I can’t wait for the pillow guy to be in charge of everything Cloud and AI

I would love to know what Oprah thinks about kicking off the television careers of Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil.

The filling of the Clown Car continues . . .

Every day the Shit Show gets more and more shitty.

Thing is…he’s starting early this go around….

This such a crazy idea, but what if he selects the former head of the WWE (professional wrestling) to lead the Department of Education, an agency he’s said he wants to abolish?!?

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-expected-name-linda-mcmahon-education-secretary-cnn-reports-2024-11-19/

Crazy, right?!

Trump has no clue what he’s doing.

@Dutchess_III, oh, I think he knows very well what he’s doing. If you or I were doing it, that would be true of us, but he is proceeding very deliberately with a plan. A thoroughly cynical plan.

One of his fundamental assumptions seems to be that he is exempt from whatever consraints encumber ordinary people.

The late, great Darth Vader will become head of the Space Farce.
His widow, Ella Vader will be in charge of “escalating” the War on Woke (WoW).

Although she’s not the Secretary of the Interior, Krusti “Garden” Noem will be in charge of forcing Trumpsterfire’s face into Mount Rushmore. After that, she’ll get it renamed to Mt. RushLimbaugh.

Trump is an egotist of such monstrous proportions that he doesn’t want to appear constrained by anything, even common sense.

I guess this is trumps “concept of a plan” for insurance.

The Count, is qualified for the board of education.

He is better qualified and worth more than Kamala. And a Wharton and Harvard graduate.
I’m not personally a fan but a ‘tv doctor’ is misleading.
I’m appreciative of @JLeslie and @gondwanalon for educating themselves before posting.

@KNOWITALL I thought it was well known he’s a heart doctor and surgeon, but I guess not.

@JLeslie The dumbing down of America with the internet at our fingertips, is of great concern to me. But he does act a bit of a fool at times on the entertainment side, so perhaps its just assumptions.

Agree.

Like I said, I’m not big fan of his, but just calling him a TV doctor is totally inaccurate.

I would feel more comfortable if he had some experience in healthcare administration, for example, a Masters in Public Health, to do the role he is being given.

To point out the painfully obvious: all your previous titles and credentials become irrelevant if you decide to descend into pure quackery. Your training and education means nothing if you then do the very opposite of it.

^Correct.

None of his doubt his medical certification. His ethics however, although they seem to align perfectly with some here, are very questionable. Just google “medical claims on the Dr Oz show”.

I can’t recall anything specific, but I thought OZ had used his TV platform to push multiple medications, supplements, and/or treatments that had little to no evidence of efficacy.

I may be mistaking him, for someone else…

Money is the problem. He sold his soul a little.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_claims_on_The_Dr._Oz_Show

Cut and pasted from Dr. Mehmet Oz, Wikipedia (different than the link above):

While Oz himself has not been found to be involved in medical weight loss scams, he has made statements that were exploited by scammers who have used his image and quotes to sell products falsely marketed for weight loss.[78][79] During a 2014 Senate hearing on consumer protection, Senator Claire McCaskill said that “the scientific community is almost monolithic against you” for airing segments on weight loss products that are later cited in advertisements, concluding that Oz plays a role, intentional or not, in perpetuating these scams. McCaskill expressed concern with Oz that he was “melding medical advice, news, and entertainment in a way that harms consumers.”[80][81] He has been a spokesman and advisor for the website RealAge.com, which The New York Times has criticized for its pharmaceutical marketing practices.[79]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Oz’s television appearances influenced Trump’s decision-making,[82] and he became an informal advisor to the Trump administration.[83][84][85] Oz had promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug,[86] as a cure for COVID-19 on more than 25 Fox News broadcasts in March and April 2020.[87][88][89] Trump claimed to be taking the drug in May 2020.[90] In June 2020, the Food and Drug Administration revoked emergency use authorization of hydroxychloroquine, saying that it was “no longer reasonable to believe” that the drug was effective against COVID-19 or that its benefits outweighed “known and potential risks”.[91][92][93] Oz also owns at least $630,000 of stock in two companies that manufacture or distribute hydroxychloroquine, Thermo Fisher and McKesson Corporation.[94]

In April 2020, Oz appeared on Fox News with Sean Hannity and said that reopening schools in the United States might be worth the increased number of deaths it would cause. Referencing an article published in the medical journal The Lancet, Oz said, “I just saw a nice piece in The Lancet [medical journal] arguing that the opening of schools may only cost us 2–3% in terms of total mortality.”[95] Oz’s comments provoked a backlash online, and he apologized, saying he had misspoken and that his goal was “to get our children safely back to school.”[96]

There’s plenty of bad press about him.

I guess it really doesn’t matter.
He’s just there to rubber stamp, whatever Trump thinks.

I actually think he will try to help the programs. The problem is, many of us probably won’t agree with his POV, but I actually have no idea his POV on Medicaid, Medicare, or the ACA. Since he is a Republican I worry he will lean towards enriching companies and argue competition will fix everything, but we know for a fact that does not work in healthcare.

@JLeslie I agree he did sell out but look at our elected politicians who do the same exact thing with lobbyists. Often against taxpayers interests.
Hate the game, not the players.

DrOz snake oil pitchman https://whyy.org/articles/dr-oz-reputation-promoting-questionable-products/

I heard rumors he’s looking to tap Dog the Bounty Hunter for director of the FBI, and Colonel Sanders to head up the Army’s poultry department. Other notable picks are Harrison Ford to head up both NASA and the Federal Archeology Program simultaneously, The Noah’s Ark guy to run the Navy. I even heard he’s recruiting the this guyr to head up the INS

I’m hoping for some guy who wears a Buffaloes horns on his head, and paints his body red, white, and blue, and I’m OK if he carries a staff.

But he has to dress like that 24/7.

I wonder if the My Pillow guy will get an appointment.

@chyna yes yes YES ! He needs the money. . . .

No, what would be the icing on the cake and complete the trifecta would be appointing Joseph Mercola as the head of the FDA.

Rumor has it that he is going to pardon Harvey Weinstein and offer him new cabinet position of Perversion Commander.

I read a NY Times editorial about it and here is a snippet:

President-elect Donald J. Trump, whose rise was fueled by reality TV stardom, is once again turning to television to recruit the key cast members of his new administration.

The latest was Dr. Mehmet Oz, the former syndicated TV host, who was picked by Mr. Trump on Tuesday to oversee Medicare and Medicaid.

Dr. Oz follows Pete Hegseth, who could move straight from co-hosting the weekend edition of “Fox & Friends” to overseeing 1.3 million active-duty troops as defense secretary, and Sean Duffy, a Fox Business host and former star of MTV’s “The Real World,” who is now poised to run the Transportation Department. (His wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, is Mr. Hegseth’s erstwhile “Fox & Friends” co-host.)

Mike Huckabee, Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, hosted a live Fox News show for seven years. Tulsi Gabbard, whom Mr. Trump has said he plans to nominate for national intelligence director, was a paid Fox News contributor until August. His choice for border czar, Tom Homan, was a contributor at the network until last week.

At this rate, the second season of the Trump administration may end up with more television stars than the first one.

“Trump wants an administration beginning with him, but including his cabinet and senior staff, who are effective communicators who can keep the country up-to-date regularly on what they’re doing on behalf of the American people,” said Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House counselor during Mr. Trump’s first term.

One difference this time around is the sheer size and responsibility of the positions Mr. Trump is filling with figures who are better known for on-air punditry than managerial skill.

Mr. Hegseth, whom Mr. Trump considered for veterans affairs secretary in 2018, served in the military but has no experience overseeing a sprawling bureaucracy; the Defense Department is largest agency in the federal government. Until 2022, Dr. Oz hosted a daytime talk show; now he would be responsible for providing health coverage to more than 150 million Americans.

Ms. Conway — herself now a Fox News contributor — said in an interview that Mr. Trump prized a “public-facing” team that could deliver a clear message. She drew a contrast between the incoming administration and the Biden White House, which she said had “spent three years telling us that behind the scenes, Biden is a triathlete trapeze artist, we just can’t see it.”

Mr. Trump, for all his appearances on niche media outlets during the campaign, remains a careful observer of mainstream cable news and the Nielsen ratings of specific programs and anchors.

The last time he held office, he picked the CNBC star Larry Kudlow as his chief economic adviser and the “Fox & Friends” anchor Heather Nauert as a State Department spokeswoman.

John R. Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations who became a Fox News fixture, became his national security adviser. In recent days, Mr. Bolton has castigated Mr. Trump’s selection of Ms. Gabbard and referred to the pick of Matt Gaetz for attorney general as “the worst nomination for a cabinet position in American history.”

(Omarosa Manigault Newman, a familiar face from Mr. Trump’s “Apprentice” days, also briefly held a White House role. It ended in acrimony: She later joined “Celebrity Big Brother” and criticized the administration as “so bad.”)

Here’s the link that the article is from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/business/media/trump-fox-news-dr-oz.html

^Thank you for posting the article.

Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his name for Attorney General. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/matt-gaetz-withdraws-donald-trumps-attorney-general/story?id=116099891

I’m guessing they told him it’s not looking good, and he decides to save face by withdrawing, the way a job will tell someone to resign instead of being fired.

Gaetz likely was told to step away.
If he couldn’t even make it past Trump’s supporters in DC, it would have made Trump look bad.
This saves Trump from the public appearance of gross incompetence, SO early in his 2nd term…

It was the report about Gaetz, being paraded in front of the American people, that was the final straw.
It likely would have cast DC elites, in even worse light than normal. As they clearly swept underage prostitutes, possible sex traffic involvement, illicit drug use, amongst other things under the rug for Gaetz.

Bunson Honeydew for surgeon general.

I would appoint David Ramsey as special counsel on government waste, hell even Gordon Ramsey.

Trump’s only 2 goals with the agencies are:
1) Rewarding loyalists
2) Destroying the agencies.
He’s never made an honest decision in his life.
He thinks the agencies are “in the way” and should be destroyed.
Steve Bannon has called for this for a decade now. He’s just doing what Steve Bannon always called for.