Popcorn time: Oz denies Trump is ‘leader of the party’

Mehmet Oz, the celebrity snake oil salesman from New Jersey who’s trying to carpetbag himself to the Senate via Pennsylvania, has another integrity issue to deal with. And a Donald Trump issue. With a week until the election, the Washington Post has a new story about some academic integrity problems Oz had in his medical research—apparently not the puppy-killing studies this time. But the story that’s going to haunt him is the Trump part. The part where Oz said that Mitch McConnell—Trump’s sworn enemy—is the real leader of the Republican party.

The gist of the story is that in 2003, Oz was banned for two years from presenting research to the leading academic group in his field, the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS), after he was forced to withdraw what was supposed to be an important study. He was also banned from publishing any of his research in the AATS journal for two years. So, academic sloppiness that resulted in a pretty harsh penalty. That’s a big deal in the medical research community, but Republicans don’t care if he maybe had some academic ethics problems—they’re not looking for honesty. What they’re looking for is fealty to Trump. And that’s the problem.

When the Post went to Eric Rose, chief of cardiac surgery at Columbia University’s medical program and Oz’s superior at the time to get confirmation on the research story, they got a whole different story:  “He said to me, Trump isn’t the leader of the party,” Rose said. “He told me that Mitch McConnell is the leader of the Republican Party.” Oz also told Rose that the governor candidate, Doug Mastriano, “won’t win.”

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