While social media was crawling with trolls claiming that John Fetterman (D-PA) shouldn’t have even run because he’s recovering from a stroke (the same people support alleged wife and child abuser Herschel Walker, who is not going to recover from what ails him), the main highlight of the show might have been missed.
Mehmet Oz (R-NJ, maybe now PA) was finally forced to answer the abortion question – a topic he literally fled and called the police when asked about throughout the campaign, and then was caught on video saying he believed all abortion was murder at any stage – and now we know why he was so cagey.
Oz told the world last night that he thinks abortion should be between “a woman, her doctor, and local political leaders.”
Holy shit: Oz says his abortion position: should be between "a woman, her doctor, and local political leaders" #PASenDebate pic.twitter.com/UDiJvDYHYo
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— Pat Dennis (@patdennis) October 26, 2022
We have already established the lack of equal justice and at times deadly issues with policing in this country. Which might be why Republicans want to give even more power to local “political leaders” – to give local leaders the power to weaponize police against pregnant people (this idea isn’t actually far out there, Republicans have tried this before with their “report any pregnant woman who has a miscarriage” law).
The reaction by Fetterman campaign manager Brendan McPhillips sums up exactly how this sounded to a lot of women:
“Ok so we voted to fix that dang pothole on Elm. Up next on the city council’s agenda: Should Jennifer survive her ectopic pregnancy?”
— Sam Youngman (@samyoungman) October 26, 2022
Perhaps this is why John Fetterman raised more than 1 million dollars in just three hours after the debate.
This is the same Oz who got busted pushing potentially dangerous products and fringe viewpoints and the same Oz about whom over 150 doctors from around Pennsylvania warned due to his “shameful disregard for medical science and the wellbeing of his audience…”
While trolls tried to focus attention on Fetterman’s speech recovery, the Philadelphia Inquirer got the real point given that Fetterman will recover, which is POLICY. What is this person’s policy?
The directness of Fetterman’s support for a living wage, unions, college debt relief, compassionate immigration policies, and ensuring reproductive rights showed this was a debate between a candidate with a heart issue and an opponent who barely has one.”
John Fetterman got knocked down by his stroke, but then he got back up to fight, for the people of Pennsylvania, like he did as Mayor of Braddock and like he is doing as Lt. Governor right now.
Fetterman has long supported abortion rights. In fact, he wants to enshrine abortion rights and in the meantime, provide federal transportation for people in states where it is banned.
Oz even made the very odd statement when pushed about whether or not he had profited from the dangerous products he pushed on his TV show that, “It’s a television show, like this is a television show.”
That’s a Trumpian non-answer and a very alarming admission that he doesn’t see the difference between making decisions for other people’s lives as a senator and pushing quack get rich quick schemes on an audience who decide to tune in to his show.
It was also a stunning moment of revelation that he isn’t interested in discussing actual policy positions at all, he sees the debate as just a TV show. He won’t tell us his policy positions on issues that matter to voters, and that is unacceptable.
Haven’t we already done this show with the slick, hard-to-pin-down TV show brand versus the “flawed but experienced” candidate? It didn’t end well before. To imagine giving someone like Oz, or worse someone like Republican gubernatorial neo-Nazi pal Doug Mastriano, the power to decide personal medical care is absolutely terrifying. “Misinformation-spouting celebrities seem to be a GOP favorite,” Scientific American wrote in an opinion piece on why Oz would be even more dangerous in Congress than he is playing a doctor on TV.
Take it a step further, the local township meeting or police. My local township is full of hardcore Republicans in their 80s. I haven’t ever gotten the sense that they care about the public they are supposed to serve. This seems like a very dangerous idea.
Mehmet is, of course, Donald Trump’s pick. Trump saddled the Republican Party with this shyster who is from New Jersey and whose doctor lives in Manhattan. He finally bought a house in Pennsylvania, but it turns out it was purchased from some church organization with a special caveat no one in residential real estate thought was normal, which is that if Oz sells, the church has rights of first refusal. Kind of seems like maybe he’s not planning on staying if he loses.
Why does it matter that Oz is Trump’s pick? Well, Michael Stern, the Republican who just dropped out of the Pennsylvania Senate race and endorsed the Democrat, John Fetterman, warned everyone Pennsylvania must go blue because Donald Trump, via Michael Flynn allies, was allegedly trying to get blackmail dirt on two Pennsylvania Republicans in order to force them to comply with his false claims of election fraud in order to justify a fake “audit.”
This explains why the Republican Party is running people like Oz and Walker, people Trump can easily manipulate or has dirt on. It also explains why Oz has never really seemed interested in actually doing the job of a senator. But getting to control women? Now that’s a good time.
The world Oz, and really the party he is serving, envisions is one where local political leaders wield the ultimate control over women and girls.
This is everything women have been warning about, it is what experts say is behind the psychology of middle aged male “pro-lifers” – and he said it out loud in a debate a lot of people were watching in hopes they could catch John Fetterman pausing for words.
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Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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