Early last November, during a White House press event to announce a Trump administration deal with pharmaceutical companies to cut the prices of weight-loss shots, a drug company executive fainted in the Oval Office. Fortunately, there was a doctor in the house. Doctor Mehmet Oz, whom Donald Trump had appointed to run Medicare and Medicaid, rushed to help the man, supporting him and lowering his head to the floor. It wasn’t the first such incident. Dr. Oz’s own granddaughter fainted during his swearing-in ceremony in April last year. Again, he knew just what to do.

Oz is a rare public figure in that he both is a doctor and he plays one on TV. He fits squarely into an administration run by a former reality TV star. In Trump’s wider political sphere, Dr. Phil McGraw goes on ICE raids, Kim Kardashian issues pleas for executive clemency, Judge Jeanine prosecutes the Chairman of the Fed, Nicki Minaj appears at the United Nations and Kid Rock testifies before Congress about concert-ticket price extortion. But only Oz, among all Trump-favored celebrities, holds an actual job in the administration.

‘We know where the bodies are buried’: How Kemi put Keir on the ropes

Trump’s America isn’t the outlier on greenhouse gases

‘Islamism is strangling society like a snake’: an interview with Boualem Sansal

He comes from an elite medical background. Born in Ohio in 1960 to Turkish immigrant parents, Oz holds dual citizenship in the US and Turkey. His father was a thoracic surgeon in Delaware. Oz graduated from Harvard University with a degree in biology in 1982, and a joint MD/MBA from the University of........

© The Spectator