The Atlantic

Why Is Dr. Oz So Bad at Twitter?

Social media makes a candidate’s personality hard to hide.
Source: Getty; The Atlantic

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Mehmet Oz should be a good Senate candidate. He was an accomplished surgeon, performing complicated cardiac procedures at some of the most prestigious hospitals in America. He attended an Ivy League college and an Ivy League medical school. And Dr. Oz is no media neophyte: In 2004, he was plucked from relative obscurity by Oprah, appearing—sometimes in blue surgical scrubs—more than 60 times on her show as “America’s doctor.” His own show ran for 13 seasons (its final episode aired earlier this year). Largely as a result, Dr. Oz has an enormous digital footprint of 3.8 million Twitter followers. That’s more than most of the other Republican Senate candidates combined.

And yet, almost every day seems to bring some new social-media humiliation for the doctor in his for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania. Oz has had great success as a televisionthey were connecting with Trump himself, especially when he retweeted supporters.

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