President-elect Donald Trump continues the cascade of appointments. Thus, it was announced this Tuesday that Dr. Mehmet Oz, known as Dr. Oz in his television programs, will be the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the health welfare programs intended for elderly people and people with low incomes.
“The United States is facing a health care crisis and there is perhaps no more qualified and capable physician than Dr. Oz to make America healthy again,” the president said elected in a statement about the controversial surgeon, who throughout his career. advocated for various pseudosciences.
He is, among other things, an advocate of alternative medicine, faith healing and various paranormal beliefs, a situation which has earned him criticism in numerous medical publications.
According to Trump, Oz is “a distinguished physician, heart surgeon, inventor and world-class communicator who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades.”
Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former presidential candidate known for his vaccine conspiracy theories, who was named last week as future health secretary.
In the statement, Trump, who won the election on Nov. 5 and will take office as president on Jan. 20, said the health care system is “broken,” “harming everyday Americans and crushing the budget” of the country.
Oz will thus dedicate itself, he declared, to reducing “waste” and “fraud”, within “the most expensive government agency” in the United States, which represents “a third of health spending of the country” and “a quarter” of the country’s health spending. the national budget, he assured.
The son of Turkish immigrants, Oz grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, and graduated from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.
He began his television career on the Discovery Channel series “Second Opinion with Dr. Oz” and was a regular guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
In 2009, he created “The Dr. Oz Show,” a daily television show on medical and health topics that ran for 13 seasons.
Oz recently attempted to enter politics and ran for the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Pennsylvania.
He lost the race to John Fetterman, even though Trump had publicly shown his support for him.
Linda McMahon, former wrestling manager, Secretary of Education
Trump also announced this Tuesday the nomination of Linda McMahon, former executive of the wrestling company World Wrestling Entertainment and who was already part of his first administration, as Secretary of Education.
Through a statement, the Republican confirmed that McMahon, 76, will be tasked with leading the department, although he only has experience in education at the local level, as a member of the Connecticut State Board of Education.
As Secretary of Education, the future president emphasized in a statement: “she will fight tirelessly to expand school choice to every state in the country and empower parents to make the best educational decisions for their families. “.
“Linda will use her decades of leadership experience and deep knowledge of education and business to empower the next generation of American students and workers and make the United States number one in the world in education,” he added.
McMahon was in charge of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. She was appointed in 2017 and resigned in 2019 to become president of America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC.
Along with her husband, Vince McMahon, the future Secretary of Education founded WWE, an American media and entertainment company primarily involved in professional wrestling.
Until 2009, the former executive oversaw its transformation from a small wrestling entertainment company into a publicly traded media empire.
McMahon ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate twice from Connecticut, in 2010 and 2012.
