Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, said Tuesday that he believes "lots more information" was necessary to determine whether Donald Trump was the actual winner of the 2020 election, as the former president has claimed without evidence.
In an interview on Fox News, Oz was asked, "Do you believe the 2020 election [was] stolen?"
"I've been asked that question many times. I'm a doctor, I'm very precise with the words I use. There's lots more information we have to gather in order to determine that and I'd be very desirous of gathering some," Oz responded. "I think it would improve the process in general."
Numerous Republican candidates and office holders have faced a similar dilemma in how to portray Trump's loss to Biden in 2020 without offending the former president and his supporters. But just hours before his interview on Fox News, Oz seemed to express a different view about the 2020 results. At an event with Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., Oz indicated that if he had been a senator on Jan. 6, 2021, he would have voted to certify Biden's victory.
"I would not have objected to it," Oz told reporters. "By the time the delegates and those reports are sent to the U.S. Senate, our job was to approve it. That's what I would have done."
In all, 8 Senate Republicans and 139 House GOP members voted to block the certification of the election results, many of them stating that more information was needed to determine the winner in states like Pennsylvania, which Trump lost by more than 80,000 votes. Numerous legal challenges as well as federal reviews of the results failed to overturn the outcome.
Last weekend, Trump campaigned alongside Oz in Wilkes-Barre, Penn., where he railed against the Biden administration for the FBI raid on his Florida residence and continued to press his baseless claim that election fraud cost him victory in the state and nationwide.
"I won Pennsylvania by a lot," Trump told his audience as Oz looked on and noted election denier and GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano looked on.
Trump also went after Oz's Democratic Senate opponent Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, calling out his casual style of dress on the campaign trail.
"Fetterman may dress like a teenager getting high in his parents' basement, but he's a raging lunatic hell-bent on springing hardened criminals out of jail in the middle of the worst crime wave in Pennsylvania history," Trump said.
Fetterman made sure to emphasize the joint Trump and Oz appearance in a fundraising appeal following the rally.
More and more lies from Trump + Dr. Oz in Wilkes-Barre tonight.
I mean, Trump literally called me a "raging lunatic" and said I would "bring death and destruction" to PA.
Yeahhh. Ok.
Can you rush $10 to help me defeat these two desperate + sad dudes? https://t.co/EtC75skzb8