Remember When John Oliver Tore Dr. Oz Apart?

Whenever the world needs a reality check, or to have certain institutions or people to be debunked, John Oliver is there to save the day. This time, it comes in the form of an old segment that's newly relevant. Back in 2015, John Oliver dismantled Dr. Oz's credibility on Last Week Tonight after Oz's fellow physicians wrote an open letter demanding he be dismissed from Columbia University Medical School staff for his "egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments."

Given Oz's track record with the truth, we can't be that surprised that Donald Trump chose to discuss his medical records with Oz. Oliver's takedown of Dr. Oz only reinforces that Trump's interview with the doctor doesn't matter. A year before, Oliver had focused a segment of his show on Dr. Oz and Nutritional Supplements, basically accusing him of pandering snake oil. When Oz responded to the physicians' letter saying he "refused to be silenced," Oliver had to step in to make sure it was very clear to everyone what a fraud he thinks Oz is.

In Oliver's segment, he throughly dismisses Oz over his pseudo-science, and even plays a funny clip from an interview where Oz explains, "It's called the Dr. Oz show. We very purposely, on in the logo, have Oz as the middle, and the Dr. is actually up in the little bar, for a reason. I want folks to realize that I'm a doctor, and I'm coming into their lives to be supportive of them, but it's not a medical show."

Oz also took the opportunity on his show to push back on his critics and fellow doctors for trying to get him fired from Columbia by arguing that he has the right to freedom of speech, and the doctors were trying to silence him. Oliver's response is clear, that Oz's assertion that he's protected in misleading the public by freedom of speech is ridiculous:

No. You are scientifically wrong about that as you are about so many things. Let’s be clear: The First Amendment protects Americans against government censorship, and that’s it. It does not guarantee you to simultaneously hold a faculty position at a prestigious private university and make misleading claims on a TV show. It absolutely protects you to say whatever you like on it, just as it protects my right to say what I think about you on mine, which is this: You are the worst person in scrubs who has ever been on television—and I’m including Katherine Heigl in that. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to be worse than Katherine Heigl? You are also the admittedly handsome ringmaster of a middling mid-afternoon snake-oil dispensary, and it says something that even when you do a show with seven fake models of human feces, the biggest piece of s*** on the stage has his name in the title.

But someone as untrustworthy as Dr. Oz is exactly who Trump wanted to go through this song and dance with. This way, he gets to tell everyone that he discussed his medical history openly without having to answer any real questions about it. Which is why we need to look past the entire situation and call on Trump to actually be held accountable for his claims of transparency.