Because Donald Trump is a gooey, hulking, Brobdingnagian wad of loser, his handpicked replacement for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Pat Toomey has already settled in for his political dirt nap. Sean Parnell, the MAGA-anointed heir apparent to the seat, suspended his campaign on Monday after a judge awarded custody of his children to his estranged wife, following disturbing allegations of domestic abuse.

For some reason, Parnell didn’t pull a white man’s mulligan and simply bawl in front of the camera—which is really weird, considering the tactic has been proven effective in securing both Supreme Court confirmations and lifetime passes to kill protesters. Instead, Parnell just slinked away—as if shame was still a thing in today’s Republican Party.

Now that there’s a vacant seat in the GOP primary clown car, at least one more red-nosed harlequin is thinking of climbing in. 

CNN:

And then there’s this, from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Oh, great. Republicans get to choose between a hedge fund manager and a quack. Well, at this point in American history, quacks are doing far more damage to the country, so Oz clearly has the edge over McCormick in a GOP primary.

More from CNN:

Look, with Donald Trump still at large, Republicans are lucky he hasn’t endorsed the Phillie Phanatic. Or the dude who FedExes his cheesesteaks to Mar-a-Lago every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can rest assured that Trump will always endorse the least qualified, most Trumpy candidate in any field, so Oz is a good bet. He also has past Trump connections!

Really? Who else was on the council? The demon sperm doctor? A Jimmy the Greek hologram? Aaron Rodgers’ COVID toe?

Sadly, Dr. Oz isn’t even a good TV doctor. He reminds me of those 1940s physicians who showed up in ads to plug cigarettes. Oz was an early advocate of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 cure, and this advocacy may very well have coaxed Trump’s peripatetic brain cell into the useless-COVID-19-therapies camp. 

But I’m not the only one who thinks there’s less to Oz than meets the eye. He occupies a truly rarefied space, having been personally called out in an article on the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a branch of the National Institutes of Health.

As Dr. Steven J. Dell, chief medical editor of Cataract & Refractive Surgery Today, wrote on the site, Oz, who has an Ivy League pedigree, almost certainly knows better when he promotes his “alternative” (read: ineffective) treatments, and yet he does it anyway.

During another show, Oz interviewed Dr. Mosaraf Ali, the miracle healer to Sylvester Stallone, Prince Charles of England, and others, regarding his use of iridology. According to this widely debunked, bizarre belief, each part of the iris corresponds to a specific area of the body, and a person’s state of health can be diagnosed by examining particular regions of the iris. After expressing his amazement at Dr. Ali’s diagnostic abilities, Oz stated, “I want to applaud Doctor Mosaraf Ali because these are ancient traditions and they have been around for centuries so who am I to dismiss them?”

Who? Oz is a trained clinician and scientist, someone who can read a scientific article with a critical eye. He is someone who can filter out the noise of the placebo effect or discern the simple carnival tricks of a charlatan. The problem is that most people in his audience cannot.

Wait, so Dr. Oz is just a high-profile liar and con man who manipulates his audience by telling them what they want to hear? And Donald Trump has seen him on TV? Perhaps if Trump doesn’t endorse him, it will only be because he doesn’t want the competition. And, yes, most of us would argue that Oz’s long history of raging nonsense disqualifies him, but who are we kidding? Look around you. Nonsense, COVID-19 promotion, and feral ignorance are now key elements of any winning GOP campaign—and Oz checks every damn one of those boxes.

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.