The man who has gained notoriety in the past 15 months as “the other Donald Trump” will be voting for Hillary Clinton, he announced in an interview with CNN’s KFile on Monday.
Dr. Donald L. Trump, an oncologist who runs the Inova Dwight and Martha Schar Cancer Institute in Virginia and goes by “Skip,” has been the subject of numerous press profiles since Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy. In those interviews, Dr. Trump has described the difficulties of bearing the same name as the Republican nominee, telling reporters of the snarky comments and stale “You’re fired” jokes he is accustomed to hearing.
Yet, for much of the campaign season, Dr. Trump has been reluctant to discuss his opinion of Donald J. Trump’s politics.
On Monday, however, Dr. Trump said he would vote for Hillary Clinton in part because of the Republican nominee’s “distasteful” persona and rhetoric.
“I would vote for Clinton, I voted for Obama, because I like what they propose. I like the empathy, the inclusiveness, and the progressive policies that they espouse,” Dr. Trump said.
“I have found [Trump’s] theatrical persona and lack of content to his positions distasteful and particularly some of the rabble-rousing rhetoric and hostile rhetoric I think is distinctly out of place in public discourse,” said the oncologist.
One reason that Dr. Trump has generated so much interest is that he has met Donald J. Trump, who appeared in a video promoting Donald L. Trump’s work at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, where he was previously the CEO. Dr. Trump said that, when they met, the businessman had an attitude that “might be called arrogance” but was “not as unempathetic as he currently comes across as being.”
Dr. Trump said his name has only once sparked a heated political discussion, when, during a presentation he was giving, a member of the audience noticed Dr. Trump’s name and then expressed his support for the presidential candidate.
“I don’t recall the exact detail,” Dr. Trump said, “but probably what happened was he made a comment about, ‘Isn’t it great?’ and I said something offensive and contradictory and it went downhill from there.”
On the bright side, Dr. Trump said that while it would have been reasonable to expect a barrage of “Make America Great Again” and “Build the Wall” jokes amid Trump’s candidacy, the mockery has actually died down considerably.
“I have observed that when folks realize what my name is there’s less often a comment like, ‘Oh, it can’t be,’ or ‘You’re kidding’ or ‘This isn’t really your credit card,'” he said. “Folks just look and raise their eyebrow or smile and I choose to interpret that as sympathy rather than a fascination that I share a name