Trump’s Surgeon General Search: Casey Means Out, Casey Means In Groucho Glasses & Mustache In!
A quick reminder: America has not had a confirmed Surgeon General at the federal level since January of 2025. Yes, that’s over a year ago. How we got here is a microcosm of the Trump administration generally: chaos, misfires, and the wrong people at the very top. Janette Nesheiwat was Trump’s first nominee. MAGA gremlin Laura Loomer complained about her very loudly, leading Trump to obediently pull back the nomination.
In her place, he then nominated Casey Means in May of 2025. Means has been described as RFK Jr.’s “favorite wellness influencer”, which is a more subtle way of saying that she’s not a licensed doctor. That fact generated a lot of pushback in Congress, not only from Democrats, but Republicans too. Then, during her confirmation hearing in March of this year, Means dodged questions about vaccines as much as she possibly could, leading Senators like Bill Cassidy and others to question what her actual belief structure on vaccines is, and how much it aligns with RFK Jr.’s. Ultimately, few people thought her nomination was in a good place when it comes to confirmation.
Trump finally woke up to that fact, angrily of course, and has now pulled the Means nomination as well. In her place, he has now nominated radiologist Nicole Saphier, who also moonlights as a health commentator for Fox News. In many ways, Saphier is merely Casey Means wearing sunglasses and a false mustache.
In some ways she’s different. For instance, she’s an actual practicing doctor. On the other hand, she’s caked in the same wellness industry nonsense as Casey Means.
Saphier got her medical degree from Ross University School of Medicine in Barbados, according to her LinkedIn profile. She then completed a radiology residency through Creighton University School of Medicine. She joined Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in 2016 and has been a Fox News contributor since 2018. She is also the founder of Drop Rx, a herbal supplement business that develops “clean, thoughtfully crafted tinctures that support focus, calm, balance, and overall wellness.”
Her Instagram account is peppered with dubious wellness claims such as “rosemary and sage decrease Alzheimer’s risk.” In another, she gathered friends for a “turmeric and cinnamon infused anti-inflammatory tea (yes, @drop__rx) … Topped off with a glass of champagne.”
As for the topic of vaccines, her commentary rings as though she has a similar belief structure to Means, but knows how to hide it better.
On this front, she appears to walk a fine line—being skeptical of vaccines and critical of vaccination recommendations, while avoiding overt opposition to them. In 2022, she falsely claimed on social media that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was set to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for schoolchildren—something the CDC does not have the power to do; school vaccination requirements are set by the states. Despite being wrong, her claim sparked outrage among right-wing media.
In August, she posted a video criticizing the American Academy of Pediatrics for continuing to recommend COVID-19 vaccines for children—after Kennedy had unilaterally dropped the recommendation in line with his anti-vaccine views.
Oh, and she was more than a little careless when it came to COVID.
This administration keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. The dual facts that we’ve been without a confirmed AG for over a year into this administration and that we can’t get a vanilla nominee that can pass through to confirmation without generating headlines is both crazy and a complete failure of this administration.
Trump has been on a tirade blaming Cassidy for all of this. But Cassidy isn’t the problem here. Trump and Kennedy keep stepping on rake after rake by nominating the wrong people for important jobs. I doubt that anyone that was skeptical of Means won’t have the same concerns about Saphier, so we may be back at this all over again months from now.