In a campaign video, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, went to the grocery store to purchase ingredients for crudité. In the video, Oz complains about the prices of vegetables and blames the high prices on President Joe Biden.
The video went viral. In the video, Oz calls the grocery store “Wegner’s” (the store is named “Redner’s”) and the candidate faced controversy for the video, which some said was out of touch with every day Americans. His Democratic opponent John Fetterman made a video in response with a “veggie tray” and released stickers that said, “Wegner’s. Let them eat crudité.”
A parody account emerged on Twitter called “Wegner’s Groceries.” In the account’s bio, it says that it is the crudité capital of central Pennsylvania. The account republished the video to poke fun at it.
CNBC reported that this republishing of the video has been shared more than the original: “Oz’s original video has been shared more than 300 times on Facebook and 600 times on Twitter, reaching more than 250,000 people, while the parody tweet has been shared over 4,000 times on Facebook and 62,000 times on Twitter, reaching more than 32 million people, according to social media tracking site CrowdTangle.”
Oz told Newsmax that he was “exhausted” when making the video and that he sometimes even gets his own children’s names wrong as well.
The Hill reported that Fetterman’s campaign has been using the video to show voters that he is out of touch with Americans.
Election Day will take place on Nov. 8.