Mehmet Oz Calls Trump Opponents "Stupid" and "Lost"

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz dismissed Americans who oppose or disapprove of President Donald Trump or his administration as “stupid” and “lost” on Tuesday as he concluded a raucous turn at the White House briefing room lectern while Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt continued her maternity leave.

Oz was nearing the end of a nearly half-hour long appearance before the White House press corps when Lindell TV personality Cara Castronueva chimed in to ask the ex-heart surgeon if he had “medical advice” for Americans with “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

The ex-heart surgeon replied that he was “concerned” about those who’ve “focused their entire life’s energy” on the president and said it was “disheartening to see people lost that way.”

“But you know, treating stupid is really hard and it becomes a real problem,” he added.

Oz’s attack on what most polls show to be a majority of Americans was prompted by Castronueva’s invocation of the fake condition coined by MAGA-aligned media figures to malign anyone who takes issue with the Trump administration’s policies or the president’s conduct.

The term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is an adaptation of a similar dig at Democrats, “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” which was coined by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer during the George W. Bush administration in 2003.

Krauthammer, who was a Harvard University-trained psychiatrist before embarking on a second career as a political commentator in the early 1980s, had defined the fake medical condition as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency —n ay — the very existence of George W. Bush."

Two decades later, the “TDS” line has been frequently deployed against Democrats — or anyone who isn’t in lockstep with Trump’s political positions — as a way of delegitimizing and denigrating that opposition by intimating that Trump’s opponents are incapable of rational political discussions.