MAGA health goon Dr. Oz was cornered into admitting that his boss was wrong about the MMR vaccine during an awkward interview showdown.
The physician-turned-mouthpiece spoke with host Margaret Brennan on Sunday’s Face the Nation, and was faced with a video of Trump’s vaccine misinformation from earlier this month.
“Three separate vaccinations taken at separate times. Together there could be a possibility they’re quite lethal, and separately it looks like they are not at all lethal but just very effective. So the MMR we want to have separate visits, separate times,” Trump said of the inoculation—which is administered “together” in one shot.
Asked whether he wanted to “clarify” Trump’s claims of lethality, the Trump-appointed Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator first sat on the fence.
“We want patients to get the treatments that their doctors are recommending to them. We also want parents to have the autonomy to decide what their kids receive,” he recited.
“On the MMR vaccine specifically?” Brennan asked, with Dr. Oz sidestepping: “On all the vaccines. My job is to—”
Brennan interrupted, and questioned a second time: “But he said it was the MMR vaccine, he used the term lethal. That’s what I’m asking you to clarify.”
Dr. Oz avoided the question again, opting for a form of revisionist history, given Trump’s well-documented vaccine conspiracy theories.
“The president wants Americans—he’s said this many times—to get vaccinated as their doctor recommend. As long as they have a choice in the matter,” he claimed.
“The challenge we’re running into is that many states have not clarified that, and actually it’s harder for parents to ask these difficult questions.”
An unmoved Brennan posed her question a third time, pointing out the falsehoods in Trump’s remarks.
“The MMR vaccine is not offered in three separate shots. Merck, which produces it, said they couldn’t offer that for another ten years. Currently it’s only offered as a single shot. The president called that single shot lethal. Do you want to clarify that?” she asked.
Dr. Oz stammered for a moment before admitting: “The MMR vaccine is not a lethal vaccine.”
The TV medic rushed to add: “And it is offered in other countries—like measles in particular—like in Japan.”
Brennan cut him short. “And they had problems with it in Japan once they started separating things out,” she noted, as Dr. Oz short-circuited. “Well. That’s—that’s. I—” he tried.
Prior to their back-and-forth, Brennan touched on statistics released by the CDC last week. Ninety-two percent of kindergarteners had been vaccinated against measles in the last school year, still falling short of the 95 percent needed for herd immunity.
Measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000. By July, the country had recorded its highest annual case count since 1991—with months still remaining in the year.
