Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump's administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, had people facepalming after he revealed that Trump loves drinking diet soda because he believes it kills cancer cells.
Oz appeared this week on Triggered, the podcast hosted by Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and spoke about his department's ban on all new durable medical equipment suppliers. He has been known to peddle pseudoscience and conspiracy theories and did so for years before he ever entered public office.
At one point, speaking about the president's love for fast food, he told Trump Jr.:
“He’ll first start off with candy bars—that little candy jar, he’ll call it. He’ll hit the red button. And then comes the diet soda pop, which your dad argues that diet soda is good for him because it kills grass if poured on grass, so therefore it must kill cancer cells inside the body.”
“I’m not even going to argue this right now. You know, we were on Air Force One the other day, and I walk in there because he wants to talk about something, and he’s got … an orange Fanta on his desk. So I say, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And he starts to sheepishly grin. He goes, ‘You know, this stuff is good for me. It kills cancer cells.'"
"And then he tells me, ‘It’s fresh-squeezed. So how bad could it be for you?’”
Trump Jr. laughed and suggested that "maybe he is on to something," pointing to Trump's "level of energy, recall, [and] stamina."
You can watch what happened in the video below.
People were pretty clear—this is incredibly stupid.
Trump's bad habits—he has a notorious affection for McDonald's and hates exercising—could be catching up to him.
In November, the New York Times published an article that argued that despite Trump's projection of “round-the-clock energy, virility and physical stamina" and the fact that he "and the people around him still talk about him as if he is the Energizer Bunny of presidential politics," that image is getting harder to pull off because Trump is showing signs of aging.
Trump has gone so far as to accuse anyone who questions his health of sedition and treason. In typical fashion, he went on Truth Social and said "it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean 'THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.'"
If he's this angry, there must be some truth to the claims.
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