Trump’s spokesperson confirmed on Saturday that the former president had endorsed TV personality and heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania.
“The Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has a tremendous opportunity to Save America by electing the brilliant and well-known Dr. Mehmet Oz to the United States Senate,” according to a statement issued on Twitter. We must win elections to prevent the radical left maniacs from destroying our country.”
Trump hailed Oz’s Harvard degree, “tremendous” career as a heart surgeon, and stage presence during the event. To me, being on television for 18 years is equivalent to taking a poll. “That includes people like you,” Trump remarked.
When Republican Pat Toomey announced his retirement from the Senate in early January, Dr. Oz stepped aside as host of the Dr. Oz Show, which he had led for 13 seasons, to run for the seat left vacant by Toomey. Toomey voted to indict Trump during the impeachment hearings for allegedly instigating an insurrection after the 2020 election results. In the end, the senator received little political support and opted not to run again since the majority of his party backed Trump.
It’s no surprise that Trump praised Oz’s Republican credentials, stating he’s “Pro-Life, very strong on Crime and the Border; Election Fraud; Our Great Military and our Vet; Tax Cuts; And will Always Fight for and Support Our Under-Siege Second Amendment.” According to him, Oz might win the election because of his TV presence in places like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well as his daytime talk show popularity, which would attract women, two groups that Republican candidates often struggle to reach.
However, it has been reported that Oz asked Winfrey to withdraw from the campaign because he was afraid she would be “hurt” as a result of his time as a resident doctor on Oprah’s daytime talk show. Dr. Oz’s career has been fraught with controversy, with him often clashing with Big Pharma and the GMO food business, to the point that several well-known physicians banded together to oppose his candidacy to Columbia University’s faculty. However, the institution endorsed the celebrity doctor, appointing him as the director of its Integrative Medicine Center.
On his campaign website, “America’s heartbeat” is portrayed as “under code red and in need of a defibrillator to shock it back to life.” “Seeing our nation’s shortcomings of Covid,” Oz adds, drove him to run for office. He emphasizes how many pandemic deaths were “preventable,” and he mentions the institution’s suppression of alternate medical opinions.
