Dr. Oz touted Trump's Operation Warp Speed vaccine program in his US Senate campaign announcement

Dr. Mehmet Oz — the celebrity physician and TV host now running for US Senate in Pennsylvania — praised former President Donald Trump's Operation Warp Speed vaccine program in his campaign announcement Tuesday.

"America should have been the world leader on how to beat the pandemic. Although we had some moments of brilliance, such as the gift to the world of mRNA vaccines made possible by President Donald Trump's Operation Warp Speed, many great ideas were squashed," Oz, who's running as a Republican, said in a column announcing his campaign in the Washington Examiner.

"That's not the America my parents came to," he added. "That's not the one I grew up in. That's not the one I want to leave behind."

Oz used his campaign announcement to also decry public health measures taken during the pandemic as causing "unnecessary suffering" and alleged that COVID-19 had become "an excuse for the government and elite thinkers who controlled the means of communication to suspend debate."

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