The Senate campaign of Dr. Mehmet Oz finally issued a response to Democratic nominee John Fetterman over the criticism hurled at Oz due to his “crudité” gaffe.
Fetterman had been a vocal critic of Oz in recent days in the wake of a social media post coming back to light showing the Republican candidate complaining about inflation while at a grocery store. The video in question, in which Oz seems to confuse the name of a highly popular grocery store chain in Pennsylvania, has led to social media users to label Oz as entirely out-of-touch and openly mock him. However, as of Monday, the Oz campaign clapped back against Fetterman, including a reference to the stroke he had gone through back in May that ended up forcing the man off the campaign trail for the most part.
“If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly,” explained Rachel Tripp, the Oz campaign Senior Communications Adviser, to Business Insider as of Tuesday.
Originally, Dr. Oz put out the video via his official TikTok account back in April. In that video, Oz is seen shopping for groceries at Redner’s, a highly popular chain grocery store located predominately in SOutheastern Pennsylvania, all while highlighting the higher than average costs of the vegetables in the produce section. “Thought I’d do some grocery shopping. I’m at Wegners, and my wife wants some vegetables for a crudité,” stated Oz, seemingly confusing Redner’s with Wegman’s, which is another chain grocery store that sports locations throughout the mid-Atlantic, which includes Pennsylvania.
Fetterman posted the video to social media just last week, heavily mocking Oz for making use of the French word “crudité” instead of the more common and colloquial term “veggie tray.” Oz stepped up to defend his choice of words via an interview carried out with Fox Business. “Whether I pick words that are not conventional ones are irrelevant to the bigger challenges that we’re facing in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” expressed Oz.
This Senate campaign for Pennsylvania has managed to devolve into a meme war, with both of the most probable candidates making use of social media and various TV advertisements to snark back and forth at each other.
As seen in the most recent series of polls, Oz is still behind but is quickly catching up to within striking distance of Fetterman. A poll of well over 1,000 likely general voters, which was carried out and compiled by The Trafalgar Group, discovered that Fetterman leads Oz by a margin smaller than five points, 48.4% to 43.5%.