Former President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz may have been a head-scratcher to local conservatives, but the criterion he used was familiar: television.
The first reality TV star to be elected president, Trump has been a media fixture since the 1980s. The candidate better known to viewers as “Dr. Oz” is the latest beneficiary of Trump viewing the world through the prism of TV.
“You know, when you’re in television for 18 years, that’s like a poll. That means people like you,” Trump told a crowd in North Carolina after his endorsement in the Pennsylvania GOP primary.
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In the statement making the initial announcement, Trump described Oz’s TV stardom as a form of personal connection. “I have known Dr. Oz for many years, as have many others, even if only through his very successful television show,” he said.
Trump has had an intense focus on TV ratings since his days hosting The Apprentice, reportedly keeping a framed printout of TV Guide with the show in first place at the entrance of Mar-a-Lago — even after his first-place finish in the Electoral College. “He sees it as a top barometer of popularity,” said a Republican operative who has advised Trump’s campaigns and requested anonymity to speak candidly. “Sometimes that helps him make good decisions. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
Before Trump announced his first presidential campaign, there were persistent rumors that he was teasing a White House bid to further enhance his brand to launch “Trump TV.” That speculation continued after he won the Republican nomination all the way through the aftermath of his loss to President Joe Biden.
Trump predicted the media’s ratings would decline once he left office. He was right. He had been saying it since his first year in office. “Newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there,” Trump told the New York Times in late 2017, “because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes.”
One of the first big controversies in Trump’s presidency came when White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed Trump’s swearing-in attracted “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration.” But ratings helped Spicer weather political storms too. “I’m not firing Sean Spicer,” Trump said, according to a Washington Post report. “That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in.”
Trump’s ability to attract a big audience helped him overcome Hillary Clinton’s financial advantage with billions of dollars in free media coverage. “I’ve spent zero on advertising because you and Fox and all of the others — I won’t mention names, but every other network, I mean, they cover me a lot, to put it mildly,” Trump told told Fox News host Neil Cavuto at the time. “And in covering me, it’s almost like if I put ads in on top of the program. It would be too much. It would be too much Trump.”
But Trump’s ratings fixation has been a mixed bag in his personnel choices, Republican strategists told the Washington Examiner. Kayleigh McEnany was brought on as White House press secretary with a focus on defending Trump on TV. But on-screen agility also led to the doomed hirings of John Bolton as national security adviser and Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications director.
Both picks had stormy tenures, with Scaramucci becoming a symbol of White House turnover, serving fewer than a dozen days. Both also went on to become fierce Trump critics.
“Endorsements are kind of like hiring decisions,” the Republican operative said. “Being good on television isn’t always going to equate to being good at your job.”
A second Republican operative said Pennsylvania ranked third, behind Ohio and Missouri, in terms of looming Senate primaries in which Trump’s endorsement could be most influential. Republicans hope to hold the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Pat Toomey in the quest to flip the 50-50 Senate to their control.
Both MAGA activists and seasoned movement conservatives panned Trump’s Oz endorsement. “It’s like Donald Trump’s staff is sabotaging Trump by convincing him to make the worst possible endorsements,” tweeted conservative commentator Erick Erickson.
Rep. Mo Brooks, who lost Trump’s endorsement in the Alabama Senate primary, once again blamed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican establishment for the ex-president’s Oz choice.
“This is happening because Trump’s surrounded himself by staff who are on McConnell’s payroll & hostile to the MAGA agenda,” Brooks tweeted. “Everybody telling Trump who to endorse in primaries works for The Swamp. They played him. Again.”
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Trump insiders backing David McCormick in next month’s Pennsylvania Republican senatorial primary include former communications director Hope Hicks, former campaign manager and counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser Stephen Miller, and ex-press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is herself a Trump-endorsed candidate for Arkansas governor. McCormick is married to Dina Powell, who served as Trump’s deputy national security adviser.
TV may have canceled all of that, though former first lady Melania Trump is said to be an Oz fan.
