On August 10, MAGA Republican President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans.
During the signing ceremony, the POTUS and the administration acolytes gathered around him shared medical misinformation, promoted conspiracy theories and quack pseudoscience, and made a number of outrageous claims like doses of vaccines administered to infants were the "size of a bottle of soda."
At one point, Trump claimed the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, commonly referred to as MMR, was "quite lethal."
When a reporter asked for a source for the false claim, Trump responded:
"What I’ve heard is that there are some people who say it is that way."
On Sunday's episode of CBS's Face the Nation, program moderator Margaret Brennan put Dr. Mehmet Oz on the spot about the Trump administration's lies and medical misinformation—driven by antivaxxer and conspiracy theorist Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—about vaccines.
Prior to joining the Trump administration, Kennedy made millions selling his services as a vaccine and health expert. Unlike Oz, Kennedy has no medical or scientific training.
Brennan, who has covered Washington D.C. since 2012 and serves as the CBS chief foreign affairs correspondent and backup anchor for CBS Evening News, played Oz a clip of Trump claiming the MMR vaccine was "lethal."
She then asked Trump's Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator:
"The President twice said the shot may be lethal. Do you want to clarify that?"
You can watch the exchange here:
After Oz danced around the question, Brennan told him:
"But [Trump] said it was the MMR vaccine; he used the term ‘lethal.’ That’s what I’m asking you to clarify."
Oz again tried to evade exposing Trump administration lies, but Brennan repeated the original question.
Finally, Oz admitted:
"The MMR vaccine is not a lethal vaccine."
"And it is offered in other countries, the measles in particular, separately, like in Japan."
Brennan then added that countries that didn't use MMR—opting instead to spread vaccinations out as Trump’s executive order directs with no medical or scientific reason to back it up—had encountered problems.
Brennan replied to Oz's citing of Japan:
"And they had problems with it in Japan once they started separating things out."
Japan stopped using the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in 1993 due to fears of rare potential side effects. The decision led to lower vaccination rates, severe disease outbreaks, and long-term immunity gaps, according to findings published by Japanese researchers in 2017.
People were disgusted with the Trump administration pushing medical misinformation and Oz's reluctance to call it out.
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Trump is never a fan of having his lies exposed and publicly contradicted.
Maybe Oz will become the latest Trump administration casualty as a result.
You can watch the full Face the Nation interview with Oz here:
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