Mehmet Oz praised Donald Trump as a “wonderful man” for speaking over the phone with the wife of the man who fainted in the Oval Office Thursday.
Oz, the administrator for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told MSNBC reporter Jake Traylor what the 79-year-old president did—well, after he stood around and watched during the medical emergency.
“I’ll tell you a story that speaks loudly to the kind of person the president is,” Oz, 65, began. “So, I wanted to speak to the wife to let her know what was happening, but also to comfort her. The president saw me in the corridor and he came over and said, ‘Who are you talking to?’”
After Oz answered, he said Trump replied, “Give me the phone.”
“He talked to her and got her much calmer than I could have done,” the Trump appointee said.
“And I just think he’s just a wonderful human being—that he would take time. He could’ve gone and done ten other things, but he actually cared that the wife of a man that he’s never met before felt in a safer place."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast about what Trump told the woman.
The man who fainted did so during the administration’s announcement that the price of GLP-1 weight loss drugs would be cut for Medicare and Medicaid recipients beginning next year. Trump got up from his desk and stood quietly watching as the situation unfolded in the Oval Office.
The individual, who Oz said is doing fine, was reportedly a patient on one such drug.
“During the Most Favored Nations Oval Office Announcement, a representative with one of the companies fainted,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “The White House Medical Unit quickly jumped into action, and the gentleman is okay.”
Oz, who helped the man, gave some advice for others in the same situation.
“If you see someone whose knees are beginning to buckle and their eyes are going back, don’t watch what happens. These folks will actually get hurt worse by the fall than by dealing with what underlying condition may have been—too low blood sugar, et cetera,“ he told Newsmax anchor Greta Van Susteren.
“Give the person a bear hug—even if you don’t know them,” he added. “Guide them to the floor, gently put them [down], and then lift their legs up to get their blood pressure up.”
