President Trump announced on Thursday that he is nominating Nicole B. Saphier — a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center doctor and Fox News medical contributor — to serve as U.S. surgeon general after the confirmation of his previous nominee, Casey Means, stalled in the Senate amid concerns about her experience and views on vaccines. The position is currently vacant.
During her confirmation hearing in February, Means, a nutrition influencer and ally of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would not unequivocally say whether she would encourage Americans to get children vaccinated for measles, the flu or whooping cough. The hearing raised doubts about whether she could garner enough support to advance her nomination.
In a Truth Social post announcing his new nominee, Trump described Saphier as “a STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment while tirelessly advocating to increase early cancer detection and prevention, while at the same time working with men and women on all other forms of cancer diagnoses and treatments.
“She is also an INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR, who makes complicated health issues more easily understood by all Americans,” the president added. “Dr. Nicole Saphier will do great things for our Country, and help ‘MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN.’ Congratulations Nicole, our Country has long been waiting for you!”
What is Saphier known for, and what are her views?
According to her profile on the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s website, Saphier, 44, is a radiologist and director of breast imaging at its Monmouth, N.J., facility.
She received her medical degree from Ross University School of Medicine in Barbados and did a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic, according to the profile.
“Breast cancer screening, diagnosis, and intervention are my clinical and research cornerstones,” Saphier wrote in her biography. “In addition to my clinical and research responsibilities at MSK, I am active in healthcare leadership, policy, and advocacy at local and national levels. Although I see many patients every year, being involved in advocacy allows me to reach and serve many more in a wider community.”
According to her LinkedIn profile, Saphier is also the founder of Drop Rx, a herbal nutraceutical company that she created “after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and researching ways to combine natural healing and modern medicine.” She lives in the New York City area with her husband and three sons.
Saphier has served as a Fox News contributor since 2018. She is also the host of an iHeartRadio podcast called Wellness Unmasked and an author.
The title of Saphier’s 2020 book, Make America Healthy Again, became the slogan for Kennedy’s health agenda.
“We don’t need socialized medicine — we need to take better care of ourselves,” Saphier writes in the book.
She shares Kennedy’s skepticism of vaccine mandates, as detailed in her 2021 book, Panic Attack: Playing Politics with Science in the Fight Against COVID-19.
In 2022, she falsely claimed that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was set to mandate coronavirus vaccines for schoolchildren. According to the Washington Post, the CDC voted to add the vaccines to a federal program that allowed disadvantaged children better access to them; it did not mandate them.
She’s Trump’s 3rd surgeon general pick
(Andrew Harnik via Getty Images)
Saphier is Trump’s third nominee for the position. He withdrew his original nominee, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a New York family physician and former Fox News medical contributor, just days before her Senate confirmation hearing was set to begin last year.
In a separate Truth Social post, Trump accused Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana and chairman of the Senate Health Committee, of being “a very disloyal person” for blocking Means’s confirmation.
“Casey will continue to fight for MAHA on the many important Health issues facing our Country, such as the rising childhood disease epidemic, increased autism rates, poor nutrition, over-medicalization, and researching the root causes of infertility, and many other difficult medical problems,” he added.
What does the surgeon general do, anyway?
The U.S. surgeon general is known as the “nation’s doctor,” providing Americans “with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The position oversees the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Commissioned Corps, a group of over 6,000 uniformed officers who are public health professionals.
The previous surgeon general was Dr. Vivek Murthy, under President Joe Biden. During Trump’s first term in office, Jerome Adams served in the role.
