Some of former President Donald Trump’s most vocal allies are grumbling over his decision to back Dr. Mehmet Oz in the May 17 Republican Pennsylvania Senate primary.
Conservatives on Twitter were quick to point out that Oz previously expressed support for Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion nationally, and dedicated an episode of his long-running television show to transgender children.
‘This is not very conservative, Doc!’ commented Jack Posobiec of Human Events, a Pennsylvania native, sharing vintage footage of Oz’s episode on transgender kids.
Posobiec also called Oz the ‘Romney of PA’ and highlighted an Oz tweet from 2018 in which the television personality says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should partake in a gun violence study.
Trump had originally backed Sean Parnell, who pulled out of the race amid a custody dispute with his ex-wife, with a judge finding her abuse allegations credible.
Parnell started criticizing Trump’s endorsement of Oz in the hours following the statement’s release.
‘You’re not America First. You’re not a conservative. You’re not even from Pennsylvania. Hell no,’ Parnell tweeted, sharing Oz’s tweet announcing Trump’s endorsement.
Conservative pundit Erick Erickson blasted Trump’s inner circle for giving him bad advice.
‘It’s like Donald Trump’s staff is sabotaging Trump by convincing him to make the worst possible endorsements,’ Erickson tweeted Saturday night, shortly after Trump made his choice of Oz public.
While Trump backing a fellow TV personality isn’t surprising, it is when some of Trump’s former top aides – including Hope Hicks and Stephen Miller – are helping Oz’s rival, Pennsylvania Senate hopeful David McCormick, with his campaign.
Rep. Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican who lost Trump’s Senate endorsement when he encouraged a Trump rally audience to move on from the ex-president’s false 2020 election fraud claims, also criticized the pick.
‘This is happening because Trump’s surrounded himself by staff who are on McConnell’s payroll & hostile to the MAGA agenda,’ Brooks said. ‘Everybody telling Trump who to endorse in primaries works for The Swamp.’
‘They played him. Again,’ Brooks said.
The Pennsylvania-based Washington Examiner writer Salena Zito interviewed grassroots Republican activists about Trump’s decision to back his fellow TV personality, and they were not impressed.
‘President Trump was very out of sync in picking Oz,’ Dave Ball, the chairman of the Washington County Republican Party, told Zito. ‘I’d like to know who it is who lives in Pennsylvania that knows the voters well told Trump to pick Oz.’
‘I think that President Trump very, very seldom does anything that’s not thought out and doesn’t have a very reasoned and logical basis, but, for whatever reason, in this particular instance, he chose to ignore all of that and endorse Oz,’ Ball added.
Ball told Zito he had been fielding calls from conservatives grumbling about Trump’s pick.
‘People have been calling me all day and asking, “What the hell was he thinking?”‘ Ball said.
This is an excerpt from the Daily Mail.
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