Pennsylvania GOP Senate nominee and television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz said Tuesday that had he been in the Senate on Jan. 6, he would have voted to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election but would have voted to acquit former President Donald Trump in the aftermath.
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Oz made the comments at a Philadelphia press conference alongside Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), whose seat Oz is seeking. Toomey did vote to convict Trump on the article of impeachment tied to his efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.
Oz told NBC that he “would not have objected to” certifying the election results in 2020.
“By the time the delegates and those reports were sent to the U.S. Senate, our job was to approve it, which is what I would have done,” Oz said.
The follow-up to this:
NBC: Did you support Sen. Toomey’s vote to convict Donald Trump during the impeachment proceedings following January 6?
Oz: I would not have voted in favor of impeaching President Trump. I think the President was already leaving office by then. https://t.co/sP7IHYGIva
— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) September 6, 2022
Oz’s remarks are a break with Trump, who endorsed his candidacy in Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate primary earlier this year. Trump continues to maintain his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Asked about Trump’s impeachment, Oz said he would not have voted to convict the former president since he was “already leaving office by then.”
Oz made similar remarks during his primary, telling the pro-Trump Right Side Broadcasting Network that he would have voted to certify the results.
As a candidate for Senate, Oz has neither fully rejected nor fully embraced Trump’s unfounded claims about the 2020 election. In a June editorial, the Wall Street Journal praised Oz for showing “restraint” on the former president’s claims.
The race between Oz and his Democratic rival, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, is becoming not just increasingly competitive, but increasingly hostile. Oz has taken aim at Fetterman for not yet agreeing to a debate.
The editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran an editorial Tuesday blasting Oz and his campaign for their “antics” and “dragging the race deeper and deeper into the muck” with personal comments about Fetterman’s recent stroke but said that despite the “nastiness,” there are “legitimate concerns” about Fetterman’s health as he recovers.
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“If Mr. Fetterman is not well enough to debate his opponent, that raises serious concerns about his ability to serve as a United States senator,” the editorial read.
