‘REALITY TV’

Dr. Oz Campaign ‘Duped’ Reporters in Stunt With Black Voter, Report Says

Oz’s campaign held an emotional event with Shelia Armstrong to discuss gun violence but did not disclose her status as a paid campaign staffer.

About three weeks ago, Mehmet Oz, also known as Dr. Oz, sat down with Sheila Armstrong during a campaign event in Philadelphia for his Pennsylvania Senate bid. During an emotionally touching encounter, Armstrong, a Black woman, spoke about gun violence, describing how she’d lost her brother and nephew to shootings. Her tears made headlines in local newspapers and on local radio stations, and, perhaps most notably, the Associated Press published a feature story on the event. But, according to The Intercept, they’d all been misled. Brendan McPhillips, the campaign manager of Oz’s Democratic opponent John Fetterman, took to Twitter to share a screenshot of Armstrong’s business card, which revealed her to be a “Philadelphia County Coordinator” for Oz’s campaign and not a random voter. Federal Election Commission records also show that Armstrong received two payments from Oz’s campaign in June. McPhillips complained that the AP did not mention this and, according to The Intercept, other outlets did not either. “As soon as AP learned of Armstrong’s campaign affiliation and confirmed it, we updated our story,” a spokesperson for AP said. In a statement to The Daily Beast, Oz’s campaign called McPhillips’ move a “racist attack” on Armstrong. “For a white man to attempt to diminish the experience of an African-American woman - who lost her brother and nephew to gun violence - because of her support for Doctor Oz plays into tired tropes about Black women not being able to think for themselves. John Fetterman should apologize,” said Barney Keller, a senior campaign adviser.