Dr. Oz rallies with Trump and Vance in Pennsylvania
Republican Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Dr. Mehmet Oz rallied on Friday night in Pennsylvania with former President Donald Trump, seeking to replicate the endorsement boost that lifted Vance to a primary victory in Ohio — but enthusiasm for the celebrity doctor was middling at a wet and muddy rally.
Three days after helping Vance capture the Republican nomination in another Rust Belt state, Trump descended on western Pennsylvania to campaign in a rainstorm for a slate of pro-Trump candidates led by Oz, one of the front-runners in a race that could determine control of the Senate.
Even with Trump's endorsement, the reception for Oz was mixed, and boos had erupted earlier in the rally when the doctor's name was mentioned. The Senate candidate sought to burnish his Trump bona fides before the May 17 primary, and the former president vouched for him.
“His show is great,” Trump said in his hourlong speech at the rally in Greensburg, southeast of Pittsburgh. “He's on that screen. He's in the bedrooms of all those women telling them good and bad.”
Trump's visit to Pennsylvania, a state where his reelection ambitions crumbled in 2020, came days after a leaked draft ruling from the Supreme Court signaled that it could strike down its landmark decision in Roe v. Wade.
But Trump never referred to abortion, exemplifying how many Republican leaders have been quiet on the issue for fear of repercussions in the midterm elections. Oz mentioned the issue briefly, saying: “Life starts at conception. I'm a heart surgeon. I value it.”
In his speech, Trump aired a fresh round of grievances about the 2020 election and taunts for his political enemies, directing several at Oz's chief rival in the Senate race — former hedge fund executive David McCormick. “He's not MAGA,” Trump said, referring to McCormick as a liberal Wall Street Republican.
The former president's other targets included actor Alec Baldwin; Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and President Joe Biden. Trump played a video of Biden's verbal miscues on several large screens.
Oz, 61, presented himself as an early accepter of medical therapies promoted by Trump for the treatment of COVID-19, several of which were discredited by medical authorities as lacking efficacy and fraught with potential risk.
“When President Trump would talk about these treatments, the press hated it,” Oz said. “And because they hated him so much, they were rooting against America in order to hurt him.”
Trump said that Oz, like Vance in Ohio, had been the victim of an onslaught of expensive television attack ads by his opponents.
Vance, 37, a Trump convert who catapulted to a lead in the polls in Ohio — and to the Republican nomination — after the former president endorsed him last month, accused those whom he characterized as establishment Republicans of being feeble in their opposition to the Democrats' agenda.
“There is a war for the soul of the Republican Party,” said Vance, whose reception at the rally appeared to be more energetic than that for Oz.