Oz is the latest Republican to benefit from Trump’s endorsement this primary season, but his candidacy owes far more to the former president than a well-timed gesture of verbal support. Oz is, in many ways, the most Trump-like figure to emerge since 2016: an ideologically malleable celebrity who parlayed his personal brand, his wealth, and an outsider’s message into a narrow victory over a crowded primary field. Whereas Trump built his persona on the front pages of New York’s tabloids and then on The Apprentice, Oz started as Oprah’s go-to doctor before landing his own show to dispense (often questionable) medical advice. He lacks Trump’s bombastic style, but like the developer-turned-politician, Oz ditched his previously liberal views on issues like abortion and gun control in a bid to win over the GOP-primary electorate. (He also adopted Trump’s penchant for exaggeration, at one point tweeting that he had treated “hundreds of thousands of patients” in his career.)

Trump’s endorsement of Oz in April came as a shock to many of the former president’s conservative allies who had already embraced McCormick, a hedge funder married to the former Trump aide Dina Powell. Other top Trump aides, including Stephen Miller and Hope Hicks, backed McCormick as well. But they shouldn’t have been surprised by their former boss’s decision. “He has lived with us through the screen and has always been popular, respected, and smart,” Trump said of Oz in his endorsement, offering a concise list of the qualities he admires most—besides loyalty to him—in a politician.

Trump has never placed a high priority on ideological purity. In recent years, neither have Republican-primary voters. Before Trump took over the party in 2016, the GOP nominated Mitt Romney and John McCain, two candidates whose flip-flops and apostasies had angered conservative stalwarts, but not the majority of the party’s voters.