BUCK: Dr. Oz is with us. He is running right now in the great state of Pennsylvania for Senate. He’s a Republican candidate in that state, and you all know him from TV and being a doctor and all that good stuff. Dr. Oz, thanks for being with us.

DR. OZ: Blessed to be with you. My brothers-in-law are avid listeners, so I get to show off for them today, which is hard to do in our family.

BUCK: Well, that’s fantastic. They clearly have good taste, Doc.

DR. OZ: (laughing)

BUCK: So, tell us why… For a lot of, folks, the most basic question before they’re running for anything is the “why.” But you’re a celebrity, you’re a doctor and also, you’re a doctor who plays one on TV, too, ’cause you are one. Why are you getting involved in this?

DR. OZ: Too many days looking around at the walls and wondering, “There must have been cameras watching me.” The country’s in such a crisis and no one seems to really be addressing elements of it. And especially got bad during covid. I noticed it before, but since I knew medicine well, I could see mistakes made that were absolutely intolerable, and yet we stifled discussion. People who had better ideas were not given the opportunity to speak.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve asked for Dr. Fauci to resign. I challenge him to a debate. I think that his desire to be the one-and-only solution for everything covid has led to him helping cancel physicians, Nobel laureates, doctors, and scientists who had ideas that I think could have contributed and eased the pain of so many during covid. I also witnessed firsthand errors in how we managed the pandemic with regard to mandates where we took a meat cleaver to Americans’ civil liberties and our ability to actually be independent — and individualism should drive those individuals, not government top-down authoritarian mandates.

CLAY: Dr. Oz, appreciate you coming on with us. I’m curious what you see when you see on Monday Joe Biden walking wearing a huge mask as he crosses the White House lawn, and then last night during the State of the Union there’s basically no mask to be seen. He’s shaking hands. He’s head-butting people, believe it or not. It’s such a bastardization, I would imagine, of the science argument to have one day, a guy walking around outdoors with a mask on; the next day he’s hugging and shaking hands and everything else. How frustrating is that to see as a doctor and recognize how poor of a job, in many ways, our government has done explaining risk analysis and covid?

DR. OZ: What’s shocking to me is they, with the hypocritical tone, say, “We are following the science,” and what they’re really doing is following the political science. This is all theater. It has been theaters for quite a while. We see that when we look at red states versus blue states and their outcomes. But over the past two months, there’s been a slow easing of these mandates in blue states, especially the last few weeks because they realize people have had it.

You can only be dishonest to a certain degree and people even in your own party begin to revolt. And what we are describing is a classic example of leaders who are making Draconian decisions about what people should suffer through but not living through those same restrictions themselves. Restated: People with big backyards told people with no backyards early in the pandemic to stay indoors, and that’s exactly where the virus was.

So literally not only were these authoritarian moves harmful indirectly because they lead to depths of despair, but they were directly harmful. They didn’t help us. They actually made things worse, and you can most clearly see this with kids. What society, what self-respecting people use their children as shields? We closed our schools down and never opened them in many parts of the country for such a long period that we may have caused irreparable harm to those kids.

Yet early on I said, “Europeans, they’re keeping their schools open. They love their kids more than we love our kids? What’s going on here?” And I think those are the kinds of decisions once made, they were unwilling to backtrack on. And then evolved into this, “I believe in science maneuvering,” which is just… First of all, I believe in God, right? Science is a tool. I’m a scientist, a doctor. I use science to help save lives.

But it’s something that’s supposed to be challenged, supposed to be improved on, and we did not allow that to happen. And covid is just an example. The same maneuvering, the same approach has been going on for quite a while. I lived through it. On my show, I would take on government issues frequently and get beaten back — at least they’d try to — and I’d be a porcupine about these issues, continuing to strike back until we finally get the truth out there.

But forget about covid for a second. What’s happening in energy policy, which directly led to what’s happening in Ukraine? What’s happening in our school system where we don’t let parents at least their values get shared with the kids while, you know, teachers are indoctrinating our kids with values that don’t agree with ours. We see this at the border where you have false narratives, and the true story of a cartel-run human trafficking operation doesn’t actually reach the front pages.

These are the kinds of things that bother us. I’ll end with China, ’cause the real existential threat here is China. They’ve eaten our lunch, take advantage of us, steal from us, they cheated everything and they’re watching he Putin very carefully. And Xi is saying, “I can’t believe Putin got away with this much already.” As horrible as it is, he’s thinking, “Maybe I’ll do the same thing with Taiwan,” 10% of the world’s semiconductors, 80% of the high-quality ones, all of this is at risk.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Mehmet Cengiz Oz — Dr. Oz, I hope I got that almost correct.

DR. OZ: (chuckles)

BUCK: Dr. Oz, as you all know him from TV. He’s a surgeon, health care advocate, and running for Senate in Pennsylvania. He’s in the Republican primary right now. So with that in mind, Dr. Oz, how would you describe your political philosophy? Are you a conservative? Have you always been? Are you a more recent convert? What should people know about what your core, what your foundation of politics is?

DR. OZ: I’m a conservative Republican, always have been. When I was 8 years of age, my father — who was an immigrant who came here legally because the United States was recruiting physicians — told me we were Republicans. I asked him why, and he said, “Because they have better ideas. The realities of life are Republican.” So my first election was 1980 for Ronald Reagan, who I voted for, and I’m proud to have voted for Republicans and have believed the Republican Party represents what conservative thought could be.

Not all Republicans are conservative, but I am, and I feel strongly that the issues that galvanize me — I’m pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, in a big way every law-abiding American citizen ought to be own the firearm of their choice. These are all issues that are important here in Pennsylvania, and if you take it to the next step, what I really want to do is protect my children and your children. It’s one of the reasons I decided to close the show.

By the way, I burned the boats right? When you go into politics, you’re hosting a syndicated network television show, you’re not allowed to air that show because it’s unfair, ’cause you’re everywhere, and so I shut the show down, shut the magazine down, did all the things that I thought was right because I feel so passionately about this. And as a conservative, I know that some of the mistakes we’ve made are affecting our kids in ways that will be more difficult to improve, because if the kids are taught to be Marxists, then they’re not gonna understand the very foundations of what conservatism represents.

CLAY: You mentioned that show. I’m kind of curious about this. How much money did you walk away from? I like the “burn the boats” analogy. How much money did you walk away from to run for political office, where obviously — unless you’re Joe Biden’s family — you don’t typically get super wealthy from it already? But you had to have a highly successful show. I’m just really intrigued by a decision like that because you’re turning away probably tens of millions of dollars to be able to run for a political office.

DR. OZ: That’s the exact amount I walked away from, and I’ve been blessed (crosstalk)

CLAY: Yeah. That’s a really interesting discussion, right? Because there’s a lot of people out there you were saying, “Hey, I could make tens of millions of dollars, but I care so much about these issues that I’m willing to walk away from that money.”

DR. OZ: You know how deflating it is to sit in your safe little studio, air-conditioning, lots of people pampering you — or in the operating room ’cause I still take care of patients and, you know, it’s pretty safe there if you’re not the patient (chuckles) — and witness your country falling apart? What’s the point of making a couple extra euros of money, when what has allowed my family to thrive and prosper — which is the generosity, wisdom, and strength of America — is being torn down, torn asunder, ’cause people feel we are so irredeemably stained that the only way to fix us is to break us asunder into little pieces and then rebuild us with their toxic ideology.

And I refuse to stand by and watch that happen. And it’s okay if it doesn’t work out. You know, when hopefully years from now — I try to live a healthy lifestyle even (chuckles) even on the campaign trail, diner food. Years from now when I pass away, on my headstone I want it to read “heart surgeon, TV host.” If it happens to say “senator,” that’s great too. I don’t intend to go there and live in Washington the rest of my life. I’m trying to do an intervention to help. (crosstalk)

BUCK: Dr. Oz, I should have probably asked you at the top, given the news cycle right now, if you had a chance to watch some or all of the State of the Union address and what your feeling is — as somebody who wants to get into this fight — about the current White House and the regime that’s been calling the shots the last year or so?

DR. OZ: I was not impressed by the State of the Union. Of course, I watched it. I watched the Republican response as well. It’s disappointing that Joe Biden painted a vastly different picture of his first year in office than the disaster being experienced by the vast majority of Americans. I do these big town halls here in Pennsylvania, and no one here thinks that’s what’s going on. We’re worried about the record inflation we’re experiencing.

Gas prices, obviously, an eight-year high. I did a TikTok video, by the way, on gas prices that got two million views almost immediately. TikTok took it down, which, again, is part of censoring that bothers me so much. I put it back up again ’cause I got 13 million people so I went and said, “Why are they taking it down?” Now it has seven and a half million views. Why would I not be able to mention the reality of what the average American is suffering through right now?

And these are issues that are addressable. Our energy policy makes zero sense. If you — especially if you look at the Ukraine. We should be… Joe Biden yesterday in the State of the Union should have designated key oil and gas projects in our country to be critical infrastructure, for national security. And they’re gonna do everything to protect those efforts ’cause right now no one’s gonna get the natural gas out from under my feet in Pennsylvania, although we could power the whole country for a century and ship it to our European allies to free them from the yoke of Russia.

CLAY: Dr. Oz, do you think that Oprah would vote for you if she were living in Pennsylvania?

DR. OZ: I don’t know. She’s, uh… You know, I talked to before I ran just to inform her. I asked her not to get involved ’cause it’s the right thing to do and she agreed. So I have no idea. I think she’d have to, like everybody else in Pennsylvania, weigh what I’m saying, compare it to everybody else, and make the best choice of her ability. But one thing I’m sure is that she would vote.

CLAY: The other thing I was gonna say about that is you came… We talked a little bit about you coming out of the television studio and running for political office. You’re a beloved guy. When you’re the doctor who’s trying to get everybody to be healthy… I mentioned Oprah. You have a great relationship with them. You mentioned the millions of followers you have.

And then you step into a fray where people start throwing punches at you. How much did I ever say does that feel than what you were doing beforehand where you’re sort of a nonideological doctor figure who everybody kind of responds to in a favorable way, and then you step in and you start taking slings and arrows, so to speak? How has that been an adjustment for you?

DR. OZ: It’s gonna surprise you. It’s a very cathartic process. You don’t have to pretend and refrain from saying things because you know people are gonna get all upset about it. You can say exactly what you’re thinking, ’cause people are gonna vote based on that and you are the person you are. So for me, it’s been incredibly freeing. I love my show. I love talking about health.

But when I got frustrated about, for example, what Fauci was doing leading our public health response, I tried to say things but after a while people, they don’t want you saying those things. And you’ve got incredible pressures to make sure you stay within a little cordoned limit, which is why I know what it’s like to corporate America right now. They don’t want to get involved.

I’m here to say, “You have to get involved. Be a patriot. Stand up for what you know is right. Say what you see.” At these town halls, that’s my one plea. You know, I think you’d vote for me if you can and listened, ’cause if you heard me speak, you’d want to be part of our campaign effort. But no matter what, just say what you’re seeing, because if you don’t and no one else does, we’re gonna believe all this woke ideology that’s suffocating our brains.

BUCK: DrOz.com. Dr. Oz is running for the Senate, folks, in Pennsylvania. Dr. Oz, appreciate it, sir. Thanks so much.

DR. OZ: Thanks for making me a hero to my brothers-in-law. God bless you.

BUCK: (chuckling)

CLAY: Thank ’em for listening for us. Thank you.