Trump’s Surgeon General Pick Is Tearing the MAHA Movement Apart

There are a lot of reasons to question President Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Casey Means to be surgeon general. She is not currently licensed as a doctor, failed to finish her surgical residency, and has voiced anti-vaccine opinions and embraced unproven alternative medicine, including advocating for raw milk and talking to trees.

But her questionable credentials are not the reason why a large cohort of anti-vaxxers, extremists, and far-right figures are angry about the nomination, which Trump credits to health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

For figures like former Kennedy running mate Nicole Shanahan and renowned anti-vaccine activist Mike Adams, better known as the Health Ranger, Means is nowhere near extreme enough in her views, and is viewed as a “Manchurian asset.”

“She's not a health freedom advocate,” Adams wrote on X. “She's not a vaccine truther. She'll never recommend natural cancer cures or remedies. She's basically cosplaying as a MAHA champion. In reality, she is an establishment pick, and she'll push the establishment narrative. 100% guaranteed. Count on it.”

“It's very strange,” Shanahan wrote on X. “Doesn't make any sense. I was promised that if I supported RFK Jr. in his Senate confirmation that [Means would not] be working under HHS or in an appointment (and that people much more qualified would be). I don't know if RFK very clearly lied to me, or what is going on. It has been clear in recent conversations that he is reporting to someone regularly who is controlling his decisions (and it isn't President Trump).”

Responding to Shanahan’s post, Michael Flynn, the disgraced former national security adviser, wrote, “It is another terrible personnel decision by @POTUS.”

Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, meanwhile, who has enough influence in the White House to get credit for a recent purge of national security staff, called for the nomination to be revoked, citing what she says is evidence that Means had been vaccinated against Covid-19 as proof of her unfitness.

The backlash is the latest in a series of criticisms of the way Kennedy is implementing his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda, with people who have in the past been his most vocal supporters now questioning whether he has become part of the establishment. Much of the criticism is coming from the anti-vaccine community, in which Kennedy himself was a prominent leader for many years. But many in that world see the policies Kennedy is implementing as head of the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) as a failure to fulfil his campaign promises.

Means unquestionably has support from within the MAHA movement, with figures from the wellness world, where Means has a huge following, celebrating her nomination. “A superb choice for US Surgeon General,” Dr. Suneel Dhand wrote on Instagram. “Finally a doctor not owned by Big Pharma.”

But on the “health freedom” side of the movement, which is filled with outspoken anti-vaccine activists, the nomination was viewed as a disaster and further evidence that Kennedy is not really in charge. “I can’t help but think this is a very carefully groomed and selected person,” Dr. Suzanne Humphries, who has falsely stated that the polio vaccine doesn’t work, wrote on X. “Just about no clinical experience. Talks a great game about everything but vaccines.”

Means’ nomination was announced on Wednesday after Trump withdrew his nomination of Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a former Fox News contributor whose résumé has been questioned in recent weeks.

“Casey has impeccable ‘MAHA’ credentials, and will work closely with our wonderful Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to ensure a successful implementation of our Agenda in order to reverse the Chronic Disease Epidemic, and ensure Great Health, in the future, for ALL Americans,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

However, on Thursday when asked by a reporter why he chose Means, Trump admitted: “I don’t know her, I listened to the recommendation of Bobby.”

Means, the White House, and Kennedy did not respond to requests for comment on the criticism about the nomination.

A spokesperson for HHS pointed WIRED to a post on X by Kennedy, in which he defended Means and suggested the criticism was coming from Big Pharma: “I have little doubt that these companies and their conflicted media outlets will continue to pay bloggers and other social media influencers to weaponize innuendo to slander and vilify Casey, the same way they try to defame me and President Trump,” Kennedy wrote.

When asked which criticism specifically Kennedy was referencing, HHS did not respond.

In an interview on the Fox News broadcast on Thursday evening, Kennedy dismissed Shanahan’s claims he was in some way controlled, saying that “the entire leadership of this agency are renegades who are juggernauts against convention.”

The position of surgeon general is described by the HHS as “the nation’s doctor,” tasked with “providing Americans with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury.”

But many within the mainstream medical profession have raised serious questions about Means’ ability to fulfil this role, given the 37-year-old’s lack of credentials.

Means has not held an active license to practice medicine since 2019, and despite calling herself a “former surgeon” on her LinkedIn, Means never completed her surgical training at Oregon Health and Science University, dropping out a bit over four years into a five-year residency.

Means is also a proponent of “functional medicine,” a holistic approach to medicine that is viewed by many as pseudoscience because of the lack of robust scientific evidence to back up treatments and claims.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Means wrote on Twitter that “many (if not most) Covid-19 deaths could be prevented w optimal metabolic health.” In an op-ed published by The Hill during the height of the pandemic, Means appeared to put the blame for people’s deaths on their poor dietary choices, calling Covid-19 “a Darwinian moment for America” and adding that “Americans must build personal immunity defenses through radical changes in diet and exercise, or risk getting sick and dying.”

She also appears to be against hormonal birth control, telling Tucker Carlson that suppressing the menstrual cycle reflects “a disrespect of life.”

And despite the anger of leading anti-vaccine activists, Means has repeatedly voiced fringe and disproven views on the topic.

In May, in her newsletter, Means appeared to suggest childhood vaccines are linked to autism, which is not true. “There is growing evidence that the total burden of the current extreme and growing vaccine schedule is causing health declines in vulnerable children,” she wrote, linking to a blog about vaccines and autism. “This needs to be investigated.”

In November, responding to criticism about her failure to speak more about vaccines, Means wrote on X: “I have said innumerable times publicly I think vaccine mandates are criminal.”

Means has promoted her sister-in-law’s raw smoothie company. Raw milk is a topic she appears to be passionate about. “When it comes to a question like raw milk, I want to be free to form a relationship with a local farmer, understand his integrity, look him in the eyes, pet his cow, and then decide if I feel safe to drink the milk from his farm,” she’s said. The Food and Drug Administration says raw milk contains dangerous bacteria that “are responsible for causing numerous foodborne illnesses.”

Means has also repeatedly documented her embrace of decidedly nonscientific treatments and idiosyncratic views of the role physicians should play in patients’ treatment. In a newsletter last year, she claimed that the body was a “radio receiver” to commune with a higher power and that a doctor’s role was not to simply treat diseases, but to be “a steward of the physical body, to be a guide in the process of building a functional material body that is unimpaired by chronic illness and can then reach its highest purpose of gaining a clearer signal to God.”

For the anti-vaccine community, however, Means’ nomination is a surefire sign that a conspiracy is afoot, whether you support her nomination or not.

In one particularly illuminating interaction on X on Thursday, Robert Malone, a doctor who claimed to have helped invent the mRNA vaccine before pushing vaccine conspiracy theories, defended Means by claiming there was a secret campaign underway to disrupt her appointment.

“Big pharma and big Ag are throwing money behind the conservative influencers as well as bots throwing dirt on Dr. Casey Means,” Malone wrote. “There are WAY too many comments coming in on this topic in opposition to this SG appointment. It reeks of bot farm activity.”

In response, fellow anti-vaccine activist Naomi Wolf, who has compared the Covid-19 vaccine to mass murder, hit back, writing that she was not a bot and that Means was “bad news” and her nomination had all the hallmarks of a “Silicon Valley astroturf” campaign.