Trump pulls Casey Means' stalled surgeon general nomination and says he'll put forth Nicole Saphier

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he’s nominating Fox News Channel contributor Nicole Saphier for surgeon wide aft Casey Means’ way guardant stalled successful the Senate implicit questions astir her acquisition and her stance connected vaccines.

In a societal media station Thursday, the Republican president said Saphier is “a STAR doc who has spent her vocation guiding women facing bosom crab done their diagnosis and treatment.”

Senators of some large governmental parties grilled Means connected her vaccine stance and different wellness topics during a tense confirmation hearing, deepening doubts astir her quality to unafraid the votes she needs for the role.

Earlier Thursday, Trump connected societal media commended Means arsenic “a beardown MAHA Warrior,” besides criticizing the “intransigence and governmental games” from GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who interrogated Means astir vaccines during the hearing.

The withdrawal of Means' information to beryllium the adjacent U.S. surgeon wide is simply a stroke to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his movement, which championed Means for the relation arsenic the country’s apical doc contempt her nontraditional way successful medicine and immoderate arguable past remarks connected vaccines and different wellness topics.

The withdrawal comes aft tense exchanges betwixt Means and lawmakers of some parties threw into question whether she could unafraid capable votes to beforehand retired of the Senate wellness committee. Her information had languished since her confirmation proceeding successful precocious February, adjacent arsenic activists from Kennedy’s Make America Great Again question orchestrated a propulsion to enactment her bid by surging telephone calls to Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who had some indicated reservations with the pick.

In nominating Means past May, Trump sought to prosecute a adjacent state of Kennedy arsenic the nation’s doctor. Means, a Stanford-education doc whose disillusionment with the healthcare strategy led to her vocation arsenic an writer and entrepreneur, promotes ideas fashionable with the MAHA movement, including that Americans are overmedicalized and that fare and manner changes should beryllium astatine the halfway of efforts to extremity wide chronic disease.

___ Kinnard reported from Columbia, S.C.

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