After senators from both sides questioned President Donald Trump’s nominee for surgeon general about her stance on a number of her medical opinions, the president is choosing someone else for the job.
The president said on Thursday that he is nominating Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier to the top medical role. His initial pick, Casey Means, faced critical questions about her views on vaccinations, birth control and psychedelics during a Senate hearing in February.
Trump’s move goes against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement. Kennedy previously championed Means for the role, The Associated Press reported.
Means’ nontraditional path into medicine and her equally unconventional approach to the practice aligned her with Kennedy’s movement. The Stanford-educated physician agreed with Kennedy’s view that Americans are overmedicalized and that diet or lifestyle choices can end chronic diseases.
Trump wrote that Saphier is a “STAR physician” who specializes in breast cancer and other forms of the disease.
“She is also an INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR, who makes complicated health issues more easily understood by all Americans,” the president wrote. “Dr. Nicole Saphier will do great things for our Country, and help, ‘MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN.’”
She is a board-certified radiologist and an associate professor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College. Since 2018, Saphier has appeared on Fox News as a medical expert and hosted the podcast “Wellness Unmasked with Dr. Nicole Saphier.”
Saphier is also a New York Times bestselling author and has written books that also align with the MAHA movement, with one even titled “Make America Healthy Again.”
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