Reporter challenges Dr Oz live on air as he makes claim about Fetterman’s first wish for America

Pro-Trump Oz trailing Democratic rival in polls ahead of November election

Dr Mehmet Oz was challenged live on air after he made the claim that his opponent John Fetterman wanted to end life imprisonment as his first political priority.

The pro-Trump Republican candidate for Pennsylvania’s US Senate seat is trailing his Democratic rival for the open seat with less than a month left before election day.

He was challenged about his claim about Mr Fetterman during an interview with Dasha Burns on NBC News.

“When John Fetterman is asked, ‘If you could wave a magic wand, what’s the one thing you would do?’… he says, ‘Well, I’d get rid of life in prison,’” claimed Dr Oz.

But Burns, who had just interviewed Mr Fetterman, challenged him on the claim.

“I asked him that. He actually said it would be codifying Roe v Wade and abolishing the filibuster,” she responded.

Earlier this week Mr Fetterman, 53, gave Ms Burns his first interview since having a stroke in May, and conducted it with closed captioning because of the auditory processing issues he is still suffering from.

Burns was widely criticised when she stated that “in small talk – before the interview, without captioning – it wasn’t clear (Fetterman) was understanding our conversation”.

Podcaster and business reporter Kara Swisher, who had a stroke in 2011, branded the claims by Burns as “just nonsense”.

“Maybe this reporter is just bad at small talk,” she tweeted.

This article was amended on 19 October 2022. It previously referred to as false Dr Oz’s claim that Mr Fetterman’s first political priority was to end life imprisonment. But while Mr Fetterman given told Ms Burns a different answer from that cited by Dr Oz, Mr Fetterman had previously said in a podcast in November 2021 that ending life imprisonment would be the one thing he would do if he had a magic wand.