Trump rallies for Oz in Pennsylvania, calls his challenger ‘more Toomey than he is MAGA’

Former President Trump on Friday traveled to Pennsylvania to rally for Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, giving the celebrity doctor a boost less than two weeks ahead of the Republican primary.

Speaking in Greenberg, Pa., Trump likened Oz to himself, telling the crowd “Dr. Oz has led an enormously successful career on television, and now he’s running to save our country, just like I do.”

“From the radical left, lunatics and maniacs, Dr. Oz is a man who truly believes in Make America Great Again or the MAGA movement,” he added.

The former president used the venue to tout his Tuesday Republican primary successes, in which all 22 of his endorsed candidates in Ohio and Indiana won their respective primary races. 

He spotlighted venture capitalist J.D. Vance, who won the Ohio Republican Senate primary earlier this week and also came out to rally for Oz on Friday.

“We endorsed J.D., and he was like a rocket ship,” Trump said, referring to the Senate candidate’s trajectory after the former president’s endorsement. “He’s going to be around for a long, long time politically, in my opinion, very smart. And he is the one that can win, and he will win. He will win in Ohio. J.D. Vance, good man. Good man. He really stepped forward.”

Trump also took aim at former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick, Oz’s primary challenger in the Senate race, saying he is similar to Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who is retiring from the upper chamber after his current term and was one of the seven Republican senators to vote to convict Trump last year.

“So, I don’t know David well, and he may be a nice guy, but he’s not MAGA. He’s not MAGA. He’s more Toomey than he is MAGA,” Trump said.

Trump also claimed that McCormick sought the former president’s endorsement so badly that he hired those with close ties to Trump.

“David’s another one, in all fairness, and he will say this, he fought hard for it. He wanted it. He hired almost every person that worked anywhere. If anybody was within 200 miles of me, he hired them,” Trump claimed. “But he did want my endorsement very badly, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it.”

The former president also took a swipe at actor Alec Baldwin over his accidental shooting incident on the set of the movie “Rust” that ultimately left a cinematographer dead and the film’s director injured.

“Hey, by the way, Alec Baldwin, did he pull the trigger? No, I think he’s a sick person. I mean I’ve watched him, he’s a psycho. Something happened. That’s a strange deal,” he said. 

Friday’s rally came against the backdrop of a briefing that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held earlier in the day in which he referred to McCormick as a “patriot” while claiming that Oz maintained ties with Turkey’s government.

Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary is May 17.