Trump picks Dr Oz to lead Medicare and Medicaid
Donald Trump has chosen TV host Dr Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
Celebrity heart surgeon Dr Mehmet Oz rose to prominence working on Oprah Winfrey’s leading daytime television show before getting his own long-running series.
But how has he gone from TV personality to Donald Trump’s choice for overseeing a massive government agency?
The 64-year-old, who started out as Professor of Surgery at Columbia University, became a household name during 13 seasons of The Dr Oz Show, which ran from 2009 to 2022.
Dr Oz during a TV appearance in 2012. Pic: AP
He was popular, though his promotion of alternative medicine, faith healing and various paranormal beliefs earned him criticism from a number of medical publications and physicians.
The critics accused him of blurring the lines between medical advice and advertising, failing to make clear to his audience just how closely he worked with the companies he pitched.
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Despite the controversy, Dr Oz’s show was a hit and his net worth sat between $100m (£79m) and $315m (£249m) in 2022, according to a federal financial disclosure he filed that year.
Beyond being an Emmy-winning TV show host, he is also an author of New York Times bestsellers, radio talk show host, founder of a national nonprofit to educate teens about healthy habits, and self-styled ambassador for wellness.
He was also a regular Fox News commentator, and a champion of unproven treatments for COVID including hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug whose use against the disease was also backed by Trump.
Dr Oz holding his Emmy for outstanding talk show host in 2016. Pic: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
He became a fierce critic of Joe Biden’s government during the COVID pandemic, challenging its policies on social media.
Moving into politics
Dr Oz played a lesser part in the first Trump administration from 2016, when he was appointed to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.
But it was in 2022, after his show concluded, when Dr Oz really transitioned into politics by running for US Senate as a Republican in Pennsylvania.
The campaign leaned heavily into his celebrity status, with his campaign logo almost identical to his TV show logo.
Mehmet Oz campaigning for Senate in 2022. Pic: AP
During his campaign rallies, he would talk up his “number one health show in the world,” give the odd piece of medical advice to supporters and spend a lengthy amount of time signing autographs and posing for photos.
Following a court battle that went all the way to the US Supreme Court, Dr Oz narrowly won the primary over Dave McCormick by 951 votes, becoming the Republican candidate, but lost to Democrat John Fetterman in the general election.
His relationship with Trump
Donald Trump stands behind Dr Oz during rally in 2022. Pic: Reuters
The surgeon has had a long, personal relationship with the president-elect spanning back to the early 2000s.
He said in an interview during his Senate campaign that the pair first met in 2004 or 2005, when Dr Oz asked Mr Trump to use his golf course for an event for his children’s charity.
Mr Trump agreed and, after that, they saw each other intermittently at social events before Dr Oz interviewed him about his health during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Mr Trump appeared on his show, where he also said his wife Melania was “a big fan” of the doctor.
The pair then worked together when Mr Trump won the election and put Dr Oz on the President’s Council.
Then in 2022, Mr Trump was integral to Dr Oz’s push for Senate, giving him his eagerly sought-after endorsement.
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“Women, in particular, are drawn to Dr Oz for his advice and counsel. I have seen this many times over the years. They know him, believe in him, and trust him,” Mr Trump said when he first backed him.
“You know when you’re in television for 18 years, that’s like a poll,” added the billionaire, who himself starred on 14 seasons of The Apprentice US.
“That means people like you.”
What will his role be?
If confirmed by the Senate to take the role, Dr Oz would oversee Medicare, Medicaid, children’s health insurance and the Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare”.
The programmes cover more than 160 million people, from new-borns to nursing home residents.
CMS also plays a central role in the nation’s $4.5trn health care economy, setting payment rates for hospitals, doctors, labs and other service providers.
“Dr Oz will be a leader in incentivising disease prevention, so we get the best results in the world for every dollar we spend on healthcare in our great country,” the president-elect said in a statement.
“He will also cut waste and fraud within our country’s most expensive government agency, which is a third of our nation’s healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire national budget.”
Dr Oz said he was “honoured” to be nominated for the role and looked forward to “serving my country to Make America Healthy Again”.
He, like all of Mr Trump’s picks, must be questioned by members of the Senate before it votes on his appointment. Even with the Republicans in control, some of the picks could be blocked.
US
Trump criticises Biden’s death row decisions – saying he backs capital punishment for ‘rapists, murderers, and monsters’
Donald Trump says that when he takes power next month he will direct the US Justice Department to “vigorously pursue” the death penalty.
The US president-elect, 78, said he would do so to protect Americans from what he called “violent rapists, murderers and monsters”.
Mr Trump was responding to President Joe Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of almost all federal inmates on death row – whom Mr Trump called “37 of the worst killers in our country”.
“When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense,” Mr Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social.
“Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”
He continued: “As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.
“We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!”
President Biden, 82, announced on Monday that he would reduce the sentences of 37 of the 40 federal death row prisoners to life in prison without the possibility of parole, saying he was “guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender”.
The three others the president did not spare are Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018; Dylann Roof, who gunned down nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who carried out a 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured almost 300 others.
(L-R) Robert Bowers, Dylann Roof and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
‘I condemn these murderers’
Despite sparing the lives of 37, Mr Biden added: “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss.”
During Mr Trump’s first term in office between 2017 and 2021, the US Justice Department put 13 federal inmates to death.
He has since said he would like to expand capital punishment to include child rapists, migrants who kill US citizens and law enforcement officers, and those convicted of drug and human trafficking.
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Denmark to boost Greenland’s defence
Pic: Reuters
Mr Biden, who ran for president opposing the death penalty, put federal executions on hold when he took office in January 2021.
His latest decisions come after a coalition of criminal justice advocacy groups, former prosecutors and business leaders wrote letters to the White House asking for Mr Biden to commute the sentences ahead of Mr Trump’s inauguration on 20 January.
Pope Francis also appealed to Mr Biden, who is Catholic, to reduce the sentences to imprisonment.
Unlike executive orders, clemency decisions cannot be reversed by a president’s successor, although the death penalty can be sought more aggressively in future cases.
Denmark has announced plans to boost its defence spending for Greenland with a “stronger presence in the Arctic” – a few hours after Donald Trump repeated his call for the US to buy the vast island.
Danish defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package would amount to a “double-digit billion amount” in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn).
He told the Jyllands-Posten newspaper the money would be used to buy two inspection ships, two long-range drones and two sled dog teams as well as more personnel for Denmark’s Arctic Command in the capital Nuuk.
Denmark will also upgrade the Kangerlussuaq Airport so that it can handle F-35 fighter jets.
Donald Trump has restated his desire for the US to control Greenland. Pic: Reuters
Greenland, which sits between the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, is 80% covered by an ice sheet and is home to a large US military base.
The world’s biggest island, whose capital is closer to New York than the Danish capital Copenhagen, has mineral, oil and natural gas wealth.
But development has been slow, leaving its economy reliant on fishing and annual subsidies from Denmark.
“For many years, we have not invested sufficiently in the Arctic, now we are planning a stronger presence,” Mr Poulsen said.
He called the timing of the announcement an “irony of fate”, coming just hours after Mr Trump’s latest comments on purchasing the territory.
With the Pituffik air base, Greenland is strategically important for the US military and its ballistic missile early-warning system.
Greenland defiant
The president-elect sparked anger on the territory when he wrote that American ownership and control of the island was an “absolute necessity” for “purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world”.
Its prime minister Mute Egede hit back, saying: “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”
And Danish defence minister Mr Poulsen said: “My response to Trump is the same as the prime minister’s. Greenland does not want to exchange the Commonwealth for other relations. But that is up to Greenland itself.”
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Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede. File pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also proposed buying Greenland during his first term in office – an idea the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called “absurd”.
Greenland has been part of Denmark for more than 600 years and gained autonomy from the country in 1979.
Under Greenland’s self-government act, enacted by Denmark and Greenland in 2009, Greenlanders are recognised as a people or nation entitled to the right of self-determination, with the option of independence.
On Monday, in an announcement naming Ken Howery as his ambassador to Denmark, Mr Trump wrote: “For purposes of national security and freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
He has also threatened to take back control of the Panama Canal, accusing Panama of charging excessive rates to use the waterway, which allows ships to cross between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
American Airlines was forced to ground all flights in the US on Christmas Eve due to an unspecified technical issue.
The airline did not immediately say why it was stopping all flights, but social media was quickly abuzz with travellers worrying about getting to their loved ones for the holiday.
A groundstop notice was lifted not long after it was issued, but the possibility of disruption remains with so many flights needing to make up time.
Earlier on Tuesday, the airline said on social media: “An estimated timeframe has not been provided, but they’re trying to fix it in the shortest possible time.”
The Federal Aviation Agency said American Airlines was reporting “a technical issue and has requested a nationwide ground stop”.
In an update on Tuesday afternoon it said: “American Airlines reported a technical issue this morning and requested a nationwide ground stop. The ground stop has now been lifted.”
The groundstop notice that was later rescinded
Passengers on social media reported having their flights stuck on the runway at various airports and being sent back to the gate.
American Airlines operates thousands of flights per day to more than 350 destinations in more than 60 countries.
It comes months after a faulty CrowdStrike software update led to worldwide flight cancellations.
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