Dr. Oz Attacks John Fetterman Over Computer-Assisted NBC Interview: ‘I Don’t Think There’s Closed Captioning’ on Senate Floor
Dr. Mehmet Oz, Republican nominee for the Senate race in Pennsylvania, took a swing at his Democratic rival John Fetterman over the measures NBC News took to accommodate his recovery from a stroke in a recent interview.
Oz joined Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Thursday to talk about Fetterman’s NBC Nightly News interview with Dasha Burns. The interview made headlines — in addition to being the first in-person interview with Fetterman, it focused on how the candidate has a computer transcribe questions for him so that he can read them while he deals with the lingering auditory processing issues from his stroke.
Burns faced outrage by some on social media after she reported that Fetterman appeared to have trouble understanding her without captioning.
“In small talk — before the interview, without captioning — it wasn’t clear he was understanding our conversation,” she said.
When Bartiromo kicked off the conversation with Oz, she speculated that Fetterman’s computer was there not just to transcribe the questions, but to provide the answers.
“Is someone typing in his answers? What was that all about?” she asked. Oz declined to join in on that speculation, saying merely “it’s called closed-captioning, as you know. It’s actually what he requested in the only debate he granted me, which’ll be in two weeks. It’s getting towards the end here.”
Oz said he has “tremendous compassion” for Fetterman and said he was “glad he’s getting back on the campaign trail,” though he continued to call out his Democratic opponent for not being more transparent on his health and other issues. Bartiromo continued to focus on Fetterman’s computer though, saying “it’s questionable to understand the need for this computer to be with him.”
“How is he gonna make decisions about Pennsylvania and fight for the Pennsylvanian people if, in fact, he needs to have a device alongside him,” Bartiromo said. “So is this just all the time he needs that device, or is it just during an interview? I don’t understand.”
Oz’s answer:
No one knows. We’ve not been actually exposed to this before. It’s the first in-person interview, here we are, less than a month before the election. And I’ve been asking John Fetterman to answer questions on the campaign trail. Initially he wasn’t on the campaign trail for the first couple months. But answer questions from voters, answer questions from reporters while you’re campaigning. That’s what we normally do in a democracy. The concern, of course, is if you don’t leave your home and answer questions, we don’t know the answers to the questions you’re asking. But I don’t think there’s closed captioning on the floor of the Senate, and maybe he doesn’t need closed-captioning when he’s actually moving around. But maybe he does. Again, lot of question marks, and voters deserve better.
Watch above via Fox Business.
