\n\tIn the end, good energy was not enough.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tDr. Casey Means<\/a>, President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s second nominee for surgeon general, who rocketed to prominence in 2024 on a podcast-and-social-media-driven platform of inner peace, clean eating, and metabolic health, could not overcome the headwinds of more basic expectations for America\u2019s top doctor.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump acknowledged that Means did not have the votes required for Senate confirmation, blaming the chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, Senator Bill Cassidy, who didn\u2019t support Means\u2019 nomination, for being a \u201cvery disloyal person.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTrump announced Dr. Nicole B. Saphier as his new nominee for surgeon general, calling her a \u201cSTAR physician\u201d and \u201cINCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR\u201d who would make America healthy again<\/a>, the slogan for the embattled movement that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is leading.\u00a0 This is Trump\u2019s third nominee for the surgeon general post.<\/p>\n \n\tSaphier is a radiologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center\u2019s satellite facility in Monmouth, New Jersey, and a Fox News contributor. She obtained her medical degree from Ross University School of Medicine, a private medical school headquartered in\u00a0Barbados<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tHow aligned she is with the MAHA<\/a> movement remains unclear.\u00a0 Last year in an interview, as part of my reporting for a story about the rise of Casey Means and her brother Calley,<\/a> Saphier said of MAHA. \u201cDo I think it is the end-all be-all and going to save the health care system? No, I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSaphier added that it\u2019s very easy for MAHA to criticize the health care system \u201cwhen they\u2019re not [working inside] it, day after day\u201d like she has been. \u201cI would not want to be in any other health care system,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can be a supporter of the MAHA movement but not agree with every facet of it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe collapse of Means\u2019 nomination is a blow to the MAHA movement, whose adherents advocated for her confirmation. Saphier may have expressed some skepticism that MAHA is a panacea for all that ails American medicine, but in fact has tried to claim ownership of the phrase \u201cMake America Healthy Again.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \n\tIn April 2020, Saphier published a book entitled Make America Healthy Again: How Bad Behavior and Big Government Caused a Trillion Dollar Crisis. The book is a critique of the American health care system that promotes \u201cconcrete solutions\u201d to improve America\u2019s health, such as reducing sodium intake.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSaphier had attempted to trademark the phrase \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d in June 2019, before publishing her book, filing an application<\/a> with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Rolling Stone is first to report.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut Saphier was not at the front of the line. In August 2019, the patent and trademark office notified Saphier that her application was suspended due to a \u201cprior-filed potentially conflicting pending application(s).\u201d That had been filed in 2018 by Gildardo Fullen, who works in California for a construction company \u2014 but his trademark application lapsed<\/a>. \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d would have belonged to Saphier, but her application was abandoned in September 2021, due to her failure to file the required paperwork. (Fullen did not respond to a request for comment.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn my interview with Saphier last year, she told me how she lost track of the trademark paperwork: \u201cWith the Covid pandemic underway and absolute mayhem, [with] three kids, it wasn\u2019t on my to-do list.\u201d She added, \u201cWould I have liked a little shoutout? RFK Jr. may be known as the father [of MAHA], that would make me the mother. Is that something that means a lot to me? My day job is telling people they have cancer, [so] that kind of keeps it in perspective.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\tUltimately, while Saphier lost the trademark, Means lost her chance to become surgeon general, her unusual background looking less reliable under the glare of a Senate confirmation hearing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMeans co-wrote the bestselling book Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health, with her brother Calley Means, who is now serving as a special adviser to Health Secretary Kennedy. In polished testimony before the Senate HELP Committee in February, she made the case for a \u201cgreat national healing\u201d that makes \u201chealthy living the easiest choice.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThose same senators had voted to approve Kennedy as health secretary, which has kicked off a year of explosive measles outbreaks, the chaotic dismantling of America\u2019s vaccine infrastructure, and the spectacle of the secretary doing airport chin-ups while trailed by staggering headlines like this one from the New York Post: \u201cRFK Jr. once chopped off a dead raccoon\u2019s penis to \u2018study later\u2019 while on a family road trip.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tGiven all that, one might argue that unconventional is in.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNonetheless, unease hovered over Means\u2019 nomination, due to her refusal to express plainspoken support for childhood vaccinations; the fact that she had not completed her surgical fellowship, dropping out shortly before its completion<\/a>; and her lack of an active medical license. And as Rolling Stone previously reported<\/a>, Means had promoted unsafe wellness products tainted with lead and cadmium in her \u201cGood Energy\u201d newsletter, receiving sponsorship fees from those brands.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n