'What a waste': High-profile Oz booster blasts him in leaked emails for 'gutter politics at its worst'

According to a report from Rolling Stone, one of Dr. Mehmet Oz's biggest celebrity backers has now turned against him and ripped into his campaign for the U.S. Senate in an email to the TV doctor and his campaign advisers scorching him for engaging in "gutter politics."

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach -- a one-time candidate for the House -- has long been a friend and confidant of Oz going back to the days when they were both promoted by Oprah Winfrey.

Now, Rolling Stone reports, that friendship has collapsed in a smoking heap over the turn Oz's campaign has taken since he fell well behind his Democratic opponent John Fetterman for the open U.S. Senate seat.

What set Boteach off was Oz's use of Fetterman's stroke as a campaign issue which elicited the scathing email from the rabbi.

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In the Aug. 24 email he wrote to Oz and his inner circle, the rabbi complained, “Anyone who has a modicum of self respect will condemn the actions of a campaign that mocks a stroke victim, especially when it’s the campaign of America’s most famous doctor."

He continued, "My father died of a stroke at the beginning of COVID. This statement is a disgrace and gutter politics at its worst," before lamenting, "I thought this campaign would inspire people. What a waste.”

In a follow-up interview with Rolling Stone he ramped up his criticism of Oz and his campaign by saying, "The man running for Senate is not Dr. Oz. This person is unrecognizable to me," before labeling him an “election-denying, genocide-denying caricature of an extremist.”

The Rolling Stone report adds, "Boteach jokes that Oz may have been kidnapped by 'space aliens' who replaced the famous TV host with a morally depraved clone. But Boteach’s frustrations with the campaign are serious, as he says the run is a 'disgrace,' 'grotesque,' and a 'festival of fraudulence.' And he says that if Oz plans to continue running his race as he has thus far — and especially if Oz continues being soft on Turkey’s authoritarian leader — he’s undeserving of a spot in the Senate and should withdraw 'immediately.'"

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