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Donald Trump Offers Quick Rundown of His Medical Exam on ‘Dr. Oz’
(about 2 hours later)
Donald J. Trump on Wednesday scrapped his previously announced plan to go over results from his most recent physical examination in a taped appearance with the television celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz, aides to the Republican presidential nominee said.
After a whiplash-inducing morning of mixed messages, Donald J. Trump on Wednesday gave a small window into some of the results from his most recent physical examination in a taped appearance with the television celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Instead, Mr. Trump, 70, will appear on the “Dr. Oz Show,” but the two men will have a general discussion about health and wellness, not one anchored to the fitness of one of the two major candidates for president.
The quick run-through of results, which Mr. Trump is said to have given to the doctor to read from a piece of paper, came after the Republican presidential nominee’s aides had said he would, and then that he wouldn’t, broach the topic with the celebrity doctor on the “Dr. Oz Show.”
Mr. Trump has, over many months, sought to raise questions about the health of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, 68, and his supporters have flatly claimed that she is hiding something about her health (her aides have strenuously denied this). But Mr. Trump has answered almost no questions about his own health over the last 15 months of his campaign, except for issuing a highly unusual doctor’s note.
A person close to Mr. Trump would not discuss specifics of what he said on the syndicated show, which was taped on the West Side of Manhattan and is to be broadcast on Thursday.
So the appearance on Dr. Oz’s show, announced on Friday, had been anticipated as a potential breakthrough, as Mr. Trump’s aides had said that over the next few days he would release results from a physical examination taken last week. It was unclear when those results will be available after the change in approach with Dr. Oz.
Mr. Trump, 70, discussed the results as the campaign of his rival, Hillary Clinton, was expected to release some details of her own latest examinations after her recent bout of pneumonia.
When Mr. Trump sought someone in a public forum to talk about his health, he went with Dr. Oz, 56, a kindred spirit — a physician who is not only Republican, but also has spent the last decade attracting an enormous following on television.
Over many months, Mr. Trump has sought to raise questions about the health of Mrs. Clinton, 68, and his supporters have asserted that she is hiding something about her health (her aides have strenuously denied this). But Mr. Trump has answered almost no questions about his own health over the last 15 months of his campaign, except for issuing a highly unusual doctor’s note.
The original release from the show about Mr. Trump’s appearance said that Mr. Trump would “share his vision for America’s health” with Dr. Oz, declaring boldly that it would be “a no-holds-barred conversation you’ll be talking about.”
So the appearance on Dr. Oz’s show, announced last Friday, had been anticipated as a potential breakthrough, as Mr. Trump’s aides had said that over the next few days he would release results from a physical examination taken last week.
In an interview with Fox News, Dr. Oz said he planned to ask “pointed questions,” but he suggested that most holds would, in fact, be barred.
“The metaphor for me is, this is a doctor’s office, the studio,” he said. “So I’m not going to ask him questions he doesn’t want to have answered, and I also don’t want to talk about anybody else.”
“I do think people want to understand, well, what happens to my health care if Mr. Trump is elected, and more importantly, what kind of role model is he for health in our country?” Dr. Oz added.
Dr. Oz also said he would ask Mr. Trump, a lover of fast food, “What does he eat — how does he deal with the stress?”
Dr. Oz said he had also invited Mrs. Clinton to appear on the show.
Dr. Oz said he had also invited Mrs. Clinton to appear on the show.
So far the most the public knows about Mr. Trump’s health is a letter from Dr. Harold Bornstein, a longtime doctor for Mr. Trump, which dripped superlatives about him but offered little by way of specifics.
A cardiothoracic surgeon by training, Dr. Oz has a large female viewership, one reason the Trump campaign chose him as an outlet.
A cardiothoracic surgeon by training, Dr. Oz has a large female viewership, one reason the Trump campaign chose him as an outlet.
Famous thanks to Oprah Winfrey, who knighted him “America’s Doctor,” Dr. Oz, who has worked at some of New York’s top hospitals, has a large and devoted fan base. He has been praised for focusing on lifestyle choices and for his ability to explain medical concepts in an easy-to-grasp manner.
Famous thanks to Oprah Winfrey, who knighted him “America’s Doctor,” Dr. Oz, who has worked at some of New York’s top hospitals, has a large and devoted fan base. He has been praised for focusing on lifestyle choices and for his ability to explain medical concepts in an easy-to-grasp manner.
He has also been criticized for questionable assertions over the course of his television career, and sometimes speaks in the same type of hyperbole that Mr. Trump employs and that the medical profession generally rejects.
He has also been criticized for questionable assertions over the course of his television career, and sometimes speaks in the same type of hyperbole that Mr. Trump employs and that the medical profession generally rejects.
He has been modestly involved in local politics in New Jersey and has donated to a number of Republicans’ campaigns over the years, including State Senator Thomas Kean Jr.
Dr. Oz told The New York Times in 2010 that he sometimes contemplated running for political office, although he has not yet acted on that impulse.
Yet like the man whose health he will discuss on television, Dr. Oz has also been accused of making factually shaky claims, and has promoted products and theories that have been proven faulty.
One of the most famous of those claims came on a 2011 episode of his show in which he said that lab testing he had called for on apple juice samples showed unsafe levels of arsenic, leading to a public panic. The F.D.A. denounced his claim as “irresponsible” and said its testing had demonstrated otherwise.
He was also grilled at a Senate hearing in 2014 for featuring weight-loss products on his show that were not proven to work. And a study by a British medical journal found that about half the claims made on his show were not supported by evidence.
In 2015, a group of doctors called on Columbia University Medical Center to remove Dr. Oz from its faculty members because of “an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.” In particular, the doctors attacked what they called Dr. Oz’s “baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops.”
Dr. Oz defended himself on his show, noting that some of the protesting doctors had ties to a lobbying group for the genetically modified crop industry.
“We will not be silenced,” he said. “We will not give in.”
