This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.
“If Dr. Oz is about protecting and preserving Medicare and Medicaid, I’m voting for the dude.” —Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman
It’s been hard to put a finger on it, but there’s something different about John Fetterman of late. It started softly. His alliance with Republicans on restrictive immigration policies raised eyebrows and angered some activists, though Fetterman had said on the campaign trail that he was supportive of Title 42, one of the Trump-era immigration crackdowns. His total embrace of Netanyahu and the far-right Israeli government’s campaign in Gaza, which has included him draping himself in the Israeli flag and jeering at protesters, felt a little extreme, even if he had also said he was pro-Israel on the campaign trail.
Then, last December, he announced he was “not a progressive,” despite having identified as a progressive for years. His famous pugnacity became trained more and more on members of his own party, and his own constituents, than on Republicans.
So maybe Fetterman’s politics were always a little hazy, and maybe he was an equal-opportunity offender. But then, this week, when President-elect Donald Trump announced one Dr. Mehmet Oz as his nominee for the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, it became clear: Fetterman has changed.
In 2022 the two men ran one of the bitterest Senate races in recent memory. The Fetterman campaign thrashed Oz mercilessly and personally, for everything from his 10 houses to his out-of-state primary residence in New Jersey, to his use of the word crudité in a clumsy campaign stunt in which he tried to make hay out of the high price of groceries. In one particularly famous statement, Fetterman said, “Remember the Oz rule: If he’s on TV, he’s lying.” Oz, for his part, seemed to hate Fetterman right back, being so mean to him during their debate that he was accused of bullying.
On the policy front, Fetterman crushed Oz specifically for his desire to privatize Medicare, along with his long history of selling misleading miracle-cure medical supplements.
And now, with Oz in line to win a plum appointment—one of the most important health care posts in America, to oversee the entire Medicare, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act operation—what is Fetterman’s response? “I’d have a beer with the dude. … I’m absolutely going to vote for the dude.”
It’s an about-face about as total as one can make. Fetterman clarified that so long as Oz said he wouldn’t cut Medicare and Medicaid, he would vote for him readily. One need not travel far for evidence that Republican nominees will lie in confirmation hearings to get approved: Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett said they wouldn’t vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Oz’s confirmation hearing is going to be televised, and you know what Fetterman said himself about the doctor’s categorical dishonesty on air.
Fetterman’s explanation for his newfound Oz support was not satisfying to his own former campaign staffers, one of whom took to X to express extreme alarm at the politician’s turn. “This is a huge personal betrayal to me,” she wrote.
Of course, Oz has a history of advocating for Medicare and Medicaid privatization; one need only have watched a Fetterman campaign ad to know that. And one need only listen to Fetterman himself to realize that Oz also has a history of saying one thing and doing another.
Not only is he one of the country’s highest-profile medical fraudsters; he was, notoriously, Fetterman’s personal nemesis. The first count remains true—the second, not so much anymore.
Fetterman was once seen as Democrats’ most effective brawler when it came to battling Republicans. Now, with Trump riding back into Washington, the party has turned conciliatory—none more so than Fetterman himself, who, in just two years, has gone from brutally attacking Oz, on policy and on personality, to becoming his most enthusiastic, on-record yes vote in the entire chamber.
To quote another Fetterman ad: “He took advantage of his viewers. Now he expects us to trust him?” That was supposed to be in reference to Oz, but it’s come to describe the senator himself.
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