- PA Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz voted in a 2018 Turkish election, ABC News reported.
- Mike Pompeo, former Trump Secretary of State, endorsed Oz’s opponent.
- Pompeo said the office should be held by a “patriotic American conservative.”
Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State under President Donald Trump, questioned Dr. Mehmet Oz’s ties to the country of Turkey on Friday.
ABC reported on Wednesday that Oz voted in a 2018 Turkish election, despite denying he was ever politically active in the country.
Oz, who is backed by former President Donald Trump, is running in a high-profile Pennsylvania Senate Republican primary against David McCormick, who is endorsed by Pompeo. The primary is set for May 17.
“Maybe it’s all innocent, maybe it’s all straight up,” Pompeo said during a press briefing on Friday, The Hill reported. “but we and the people of Pennsylvania and the Americans who he will be representing as one of the 100 members of the United States Senate voting on important national security matters need to understand the scope and depth of his relationship with the Turkish government.”
Although nothing unlawful has taken place because Oz is a dual citizen of both Turkey and the US, Pompeo said it’s a matter of who is “best suited” to hold office in Pennsylvania, a state previously represented by a “patriotic American conservative.”
Oz campaign communications director Brittany Yanick told Insider the comments were “pathetic and xenophobic.”
“Dr. Oz has already said when elected to the Senate he would renounce his citizenship,” Yanick said. “There is no security issue whatsoever, and David McCormick knows that Dr. Oz has maintained his dual citizenship to make it easier to help care for his mother who has Alzheimer’s and lives there.”
On Friday, Trump stumped in Pennsylvania with Oz, who was met with boos and jeers every time his video montage played on screens. The controversial TV doctor faces scrutiny for not being from Pennsylvania, for using his in-laws’ address to vote in the state last year, and for promoting unfounded medical cures.
