President Donald Trump has reached into his favorite television network’s stable of personalities to be the nation’s top doctor after his first pick failed to clear Senate confirmation amid questions over her history of anti-vaccine activism.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said he is nominating Dr. Nicole Saphier, a radiologist who is director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New Jersey, to be Surgeon General.
The Arizona native completed her initial medical education at Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica before moving on to a radiology residency and an oncologic imaging fellowship in Arizona, with the latter coming at the Mayo Clinic’s branch in the Grand Canyon State.
The president 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.”
He also praised the longtime television talking head as “an INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR, who makes complicated health issues more easily understood by all Americans.”
Speaking in the Oval Office as he signed paperwork to make Saphier’s nomination official, Trump told reporters his latest pick “is going to be great.”
In a separate post to his social media platform, the president excoriated Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy as “a very disloyal person” for having opposed his previous nominee for the role, Casey Means.
Means, a Stanford Medical School graduate who did not complete a residency and has never been a practicing physician, had been recommended to the president by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Her nomination had faced skepticism from Cassidy, who before joining the Senate had been a liver disease and internal medicine specialist, over her long history of vaccine skepticism.
Trump wrote that Means will “continue to fight” for his and Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again agenda on “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.”
Unlike Means, Saphier has spent years as a practicing doctor and was supportive of vaccination in her former role as a Fox contributor.
In one video she filmed for the channel’s website, she pointed out that the "overwhelming majority" of "good research" shows no causal link between childhood vaccinations and autism.
But the veteran radiologist has also called for the Centers for Disease Control to be “less stringent” with the childhood vaccination schedule and leave more decision-making to parents.
In the same Fox News video, she said: “"If parents don't want to give these vaccines when their babies are so little, I think it's OK to have that conversation and let them wait until their child's a little bit older before they head off to kindergarten.”
Saphier is Trump’s third selection to be Surgeon General, a position that entails serving as the government’s top public health spokesperson as well as leading the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps as a Vice Admiral.
Before Means’ nomination fell apart amid scrutiny from Cassidy and universal opposition from Democrats in the Senate, Trump had nominated another ex-Fox News contributor — Dr. Janette Nesheiwat — to the role.
Nesheiwat, a board-certified family medicine physician who had worked as a television presenter in Arkansas in addition to her medical practice, was eventually withdrawn from consideration after she was targeted by pro-Trump influencer Laura Loomer.
Loomer, who has often pushed Trump to withdraw nominations and fire employees based on little more but the identities of their family members, had singled out Nesheiwat as not sufficiently aligned with Trump’s agenda in part because her sister is married to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz.
This story has been updated to reflect that Dr. Saphier is no longer employed by Fox News
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