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By Al Sharpton
Civil Rights Activist and president of the National Action Network
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President Donald Trump has pulled off one of the most remarkable and tragic political tricks in modern American history. He won support from working-class voters across the country while simultaneously pushing policies that gut the programs those same voters depend on. His approval among many of the very people most likely to rely on Medicaid and safety net providers remains stubbornly durable even as he has governed almost entirely in the interests of the wealthy. It is a con, but it is a brilliantly executed one, built on cultural grievance and personal charisma.
To win in the November midterms, Democrats must crack through that bubble. Fortunately, the answer is gift-wrapped right in front of them: his name is Dr. Mehmet Oz. Unlike Trump, Oz cannot pull off the act. This is a man who became famous selling “miracle” cures on daytime television and lost a Senate race in Pennsylvania because voters there concluded he was a fraud. His idea of bonding with the working class is complaining about the cost of "crudité" at Wegmans. His contempt for ordinary life is written all over him.
Despite Oz not formally endorsing Trump in the 2024 Republican primaries, Trump has now put him in charge of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and he is using that perch to dismantle the health care that working-class families actually depend on. The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act slashed over one trillion dollars from Medicaid. Nearly three million Black Americans and four million Latinos have already lost coverage in recent years. The Trump administration’s cuts will continue to disproportionally harm these communities. But Oz is not satisfied. He has gone further still, attacking not just Democrats but Republican governors like Greg Abbott, Bill Lee, Tate Reeves, Kevin Stitt and Jeff Landry, calling them and their legislative colleagues "legalized money launderers" for using long-standing hospital tax financing arrangements that states across the country have relied on for decades to fund Medicaid.
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Under his leadership, CMS has put out a new proposed rule that puts this rhetoric into action with a “sweeping crackdown on state Medicaid payment practices” that are vital for access to care in underserved communities.
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If Oz succeeds in blowing up that financing, the damage will fall hardest on the very states Republicans claim to speak for. Alabama is already warning of budget trouble from the existing cuts. Maine, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, and Michigan, the states that will determine Senate control this year, would be devastated. Since 2010, more than 140 rural hospitals have closed nationwide. Oz is accelerating that trend.
A mother in rural Michigan should not have to drive three counties away to deliver her baby safely. An elderly man in Louisiana should not lose access to cancer treatment because his local hospital can no longer keep specialists on staff. A child with asthma in the Lehigh Valley should not wait hours in an overcrowded emergency room. But Americans around the country of all different backgrounds are suffering every single day because of Oz’s cruel policies.
Democrats must stop treating Medicaid as just a policy argument and start treating it as a character indictment with a face on it. Trump's own pollsters at Fabrizio Ward found that more than half of Trump voters oppose cutting Medicaid to pay for tax cuts. Two-thirds of swing voters agree. Even Steve Bannon has said plainly: "A lot of MAGA is on Medicaid." This is a winning issue in red states, not just swing states.
Democratic candidates like Sherrod Brown, James Talarico, Rob Sand and Roy Cooper should be drawing a direct, unrelenting line between Oz's name and every hospital closure, every lost specialist, every pregnant mother without an obstetrician within reasonable distance. They must make him the face of every cut, and they must remind voters at every turn that Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill not only put him in that position but have enabled him at every turn. Oz is the central casting villain whose very presence on the job gives the con away.
Oz built a career persuading vulnerable people to trust him with their health. Now he is doing it again, from a government office, with a trillion-dollar budget and no daytime audience to tune him out. Democrats should make sure voters understand exactly what they are watching—and who put him there.
Rev. Al Sharpton is a leading civil rights activist, founder and president of the National Action Network, and host of MSNBC's PoliticsNation and the syndicated radio shows Keepin' It Real and The Hour of Power.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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