Why Don't We Have a Surgeon General?

- Okay, I actually, I actually have one. I want fire. - Oh! - He came prepared, maybe.

“- Welcome to Mindest Phase at the podcast”

that has nothing to say about the surgeon's specific, but a lot to say about the surgeon's genomes. (laughing) - Hey, I like that one so much. I'm Michael Hobbs.

- I'm Aubrey Gordon. If you would like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com/maintenancephase. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcast Premium. It's the same audio content, Michael.

- Aubrey, we are a year and a half into Donald Trump's second term,

and we still don't have a surgeon general. I don't even have been following this at all. You and most people, there's been so much shock and awe in so many places that it's like hard to keep track. We're all kind of like drinking from a fire hose

in terms of the new cycles, right? I know whenever I hear about like an out-of-work fox news host I'm like, yeah, they're probably the surgeon general, now who's fucking cares.

“Today, we're gonna talk about the three sort of Maha aligned doctors”

who have been nominated for surgeon general, which they're all doctors, that's actually kind of surprising. - Well, hang on, okay, let's not get too crazy. - I thought it was gonna be like Omar Rosa or somebody. - We haven't done like a real Maha update in a minute

because it's so often just like a soul-sucking vlog of a thing. - Yes.

- I would just like to preface this one by saying,

"Is brief on good?" - I want like real housewives shit. The surgeon general is often referred to as America's top doctor. Their role is in part focused on translating scientific findings into guidance for members of the public.

So this is like a very maintenance phase role. - He knows when you've been sleeping, he knows when you're not getting enough beef talent. - The surgeon general can issue reports and recommendations, but the office doesn't have the authority to create policy.

It's actually kind of funny, we have this role, 'cause it is just like a guy who says stuff in chief.

“- It is kind of, well, except there is a very functional part”

of the role. The surgeon general leads over 6,000 uniformed officers in the U.S. Public Health Service. So it's a role where it's like really helpful to be both a seasoned healthcare provider

and a really strong clear communicator. - Don't start laughing, yeah. - For shadowing, for shadowing, okay. - The process for becoming the surgeon general is that the president nominates someone

to become the surgeon general. The Senate confirms that person and then they survey four-year term. The nominee has to pass through the health education, labor and pensions committee, the health committee,

which is currently split with 12 Republicans at 11 Democrats. So it's Republican controlled, but only just. It is also a committee where Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins are both on the committee,

so you got a couple real movers. Peace is a work, couple movers. So today we're gonna talk about the three nominees for surgeon general and why their nominations haven't been a cinch even in a Republican controlled Senate

in a Republican controlled committee. - Okay.

- So in November of 2024, after he was elected to the second term,

Donald Trump nominated Jeanette Nashwatt to be surgeon general. His statement on Dr. Nashwatt's nomination describes her as, quote, "a proud graduate of the University of Arkansas "school for medical sciences."

At the time of her nomination, she was serving as the medical director for city MD in New York, which is a chain of urgent care clinics. First red flag. Okay.

Is one of five children in her family and she is not the only one with ties to the Trump administration. Her sister Julia was a homeland security advisor under the first Trump administration. Julia's husband, so Jeanette's brother-in-law,

is the current ambassador US ambassador to the UN. He also represented Florida as a member of the US House from 2019 to 2025. His name is Mike Waltz. Is that a name that rings a bell?

- No. - Well, he's the guy who added a journalist to a signal chat about warplay out. - Oh, okay. - Okay. He's the specific guy who was like

clearly added this journalist to the group chat and then was like, "I don't know how it happened. "It just got sucked in there." You know how sometimes when you added it up to your phone and it sucks up all your contact,

it just not kind of sucked up in there. So I just got added this journalist kind of, I'm a bit of an offset expert myself.

So that's one of her siblings, another of her siblings,

“is her sister Jacqueline, who is a model”

and a former pageant winner who was Miss New York USA 2004 and Miss Florida, America, 2008. Nothing wrong with that, but the fact that there's so many of these people in Donald Trump's orbit is so fucking bizarre. Today, she is the executive director of her husband's foundation,

which is dedicated to, quote, helping under privileged children around the world. That foundation is called the With Arms White Open Foundation. Is it named after the creeds on? - Her husband is Scott Stap.

- No fucking way. - We could have had a surgeon general who asked Thanksgiving with Scott Stap from creed. - What, just do Scott Stap? - Fuck it.

(laughing) It scans so hard with the administration that could only get three doors down to play at the inauguration. - But also, what a fucking stingy indictment

that they couldn't get creed?

- No, I know he's right there. (laughing) - I don't know, I love the administration. Like, finds people like the surgeon general, the way that at my tiny, underfunded NGO,

we used to find graphic designers for PDF. So you'd be like, hey, you went to college with somebody who knows Illustrator, right? - Yeah. - Which reached out.

- Oh God, ours were more like,

“do you have an afternoon could you figure out Illustrator?”

- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I have a thing, I have a thing. - You have a creed thing? - Wait, we're not done with creed. - I don't know what was looking at this

and he said, I'll take a breath. I'll take her by my side. We stand it all.

We've created life for the lyrics

per with arms wide open. - Oh my God, I don't know. - I'm like, oh my God, I don't know. This is really counting on me to recognize the lyrics that you all so don't know.

- I'm like, furiously Googling, I'm like, I need a reference here, but I don't know the lyrics to this song. - You're getting on a plane tomorrow and I'm now imagining that you're gonna spend

the entire time studying the creed. (laughing) I don't know how much I pick up. It's to like, fill my new video up as well. (laughing)

- Dr. Nashwatt had likely crossed Trump's radar during her time as a TV guest doctor on Fox News and the Daily Color course. - Of course. - But just six months after she was nominated,

the day before her scheduled confirmation hearing, Trump withdrew her nomination. - Okay, I can't so culture. So the question here is what happened? Mike, I would like actually for you to hazard a guess.

- Did she want to say like a single boilerplate thing about how diversity is what makes America great? - No, no. - And they're like, no. Not after 2024 in April of 2025

an independent journalist named Anthony Clark breaks a story that he titles Trump's surgeon general pick distorted key parts of her resume. - Wait, he just Googled like me looking at creed lyrics. - Yeah, she's just like type, type, type, type, nope.

- He finds that Dr. Nashwatt didn't get her medical degree from the University of Arkansas as she had claimed, but had completed a residency there as an employee, not a student. - Okay.

- So he checks around to figure out where she got her MD from and where she went was the American University of the Caribbean in St. Martin. - Oh. - Which is a commercial business.

- I also, it's probably like a distance learning thing or something. - Oh, Mike, you don't know how close you are. - That's like a, I got my degree from iTunes U. - It's 2011.

- The American University of the Caribbean was bought by Ad to Lim Global Education, which is previously, which is previously Philip Morris or something. It's like a made up name. - Previously known as the Divry Education Group.

- Baby, it's her. - Divry medical school. 'Cause that's like Betsy Devoss's whole like for-profit education thing, right? - 100% - Dude, scammers.

- Clark also reports as part of this piece that for-profit medical schools were banned in the US for over a century, for concerns over admission standards, quality of education, needing new regulatory structures, all kinds of stuff.

“- It's like a funny, because the only thing”

that offends them is like the lying. If she had just said, "I have no medical qualifications," it's not like the television station gives a shit, right? - I'm so glad that you're like getting a handle

unlike the ways in which this episode is fun. - Yeah, it's just like a fucking clown car of dinguses. - It's also now kind of bleak that like city MD didn't care. Or it met their standards, they are also a for-profit business. - They're like game-recognized game, they're like,

- Yeah, totally, they're like, "Oh, you guys too, cool." - Yeah. - So on top of all that on our website, Dr. Neshwatt says that she has a specialty in family and yard medicine, but she's only board certified

in family medicine, not emergency medicine.

- It's so weird, but also she works at an urgent care clinic. - Dude, I don't know about city MD specifically, but every time I've gone to an urgent care, the person has been like, "Damn, you see a doctor about this." - That's right.

- Yeah. - I'm like, "I fucking know." They're like, "I don't need $200, please." - In addition, Clark was unable to verify Neshwatt's claim that she had worked in emergency rooms

in Arkansas. - Okay. - So she is calling herself an emergency doc when she has worked for a for-profit urgent care clinic in like a management role, which is just different, right?

“- You must tell these lies, and then I guess forget about it.”

'Cause if I had some glaring hole in my resume, like a fat lie that I was telling, and I was offered some like super prominent role where I would get a bunch of scrutiny. I would just turn it down.

I'd be like, "No, they will absolutely find this out." I want to keep my like cushy little life. She probably makes a couple of million dollars a year. So there's all of this bad press happening, but there are also complaints from the right.

The Maha crowd was saying that Dr. Neshwatt wasn't anti-vax enough. - Yeah, I was gonna make a joke about that. (laughing) Then they might know she's vaccinated. - Very early on in the sort of onset of COVID,

even before lockdowns, she was doing some media with like Fox News and that sort of thing.

Being like, "Hey, here's what you got to do."

But it was like, "You got to mask up. "It's probably airborne. "You got to wash your hands real well. "You got to bubble up." Like just giving like very basic information

and as part of that, at some points she goes,

“"You know, we'll need to develop a vaccine for this."”

- Yeah. - But it's like, it's like really not anything, but she's also not committing to kind of unhinged Maha requests. - Right. - Like, let's do a complete overhaul on the infant vaccine schedule. - It's so funny that they're mad at her

for not preemptively criticizing vaccines. Like, before they were even developed, she should have been out of here saying, like, they're killing our kids, even the idea of a vaccine they're against.

- So her biggest detractor on the right is Laura Lumer. - Oh, yeah. - Well, who's probably the fucking surgeon general now. (laughing) Why not?

For those who are unfamiliar, Laura Lumer is an advisor to the president. She is like a particularly unhinged presence, even in a White House full of unhinged presences. She was just like a Twitter person, right?

She's like a lady on Twitter. - Yes, and kept getting banned from different social media platforms for like straight up, hate speech, and misinformation, right? - Yeah, she's awful.

- On May 5th, 2025, Lumer tweeted about Dr. Neshwatt calling her quote, "a pro COVID vaccine neppo appointee."

- Well, she's right about the second part.

(laughing) - It's funny, it's funny how they care about that sometimes. They clearly don't give a shit about it's all neppo all the way down in this administration. - So I'm sending you a portion of a tweet from Laura Lumer.

- Oh man, okay. - I'm not gonna yell that large sections of this are in all caps. - I think you should make it your own. - Okay. (laughing) - Dr. Neshwatt said, "Faxing hesitancy is a global health threat."

She used her access to Fox News to promote the dangerous COVID vaccine, which is now killing millions of people. She tried to shame people who didn't take the vaccine by calling them global health threats.

This is like sub-literate. Vaccines are a matter of all caps, personal health, freedom. Vaccine hesitancy is a matter of personal freedom and liberty, exclamation point. It is not a global health threat.

My body, my choice. - Laura Lumer said, "My body, my choice." And I'm eating it about vaccines. - We've gotten used to it by now, but this is like a person at a bus stop ranting

and also they're like five years old. - Well, she capitalizes global health threat. Like it's a title of something in May of 2025 instead of being confirmed. Her nomination is pulled.

According to Fox News in 2026, Dr. Neshwatt took a new job at Walter Reed. - Like what? Even though they know her medical qualifications aren't real,

“the only way that Trump would like pull the nomination”

or the way that he did it, I should say. I don't know that it was the only way he'd do it. But he was like, "Uh, we're actually gonna withdraw "an nomination and put her somewhere else very important." If he pulls the nomination, then it's a tacit admission

that he's giving into criticism

or that he got something wrong, which he would never do.

So he's like, "Uh, we actually found a better role "for you somewhere else." - Yeah, that better role is at Walter Reed working on treatment of Havana syndrome. Wait, what are they Havana syndrome?

Truthers, the administration? Apparently she is, I mean, she's working on it now, right? - Right, weird. - Yeah, so for folks who are unfamiliar, Havana syndrome is described as like a sort of constellation

of unexplained neurological symptoms. It often includes hearing really loud noises

It is hotly debated. Some people think it is a mass psychogenic illness. Others think it is the result of like chemical warfare from foreign actors, but man, oh man, they really like sent her to the hinterlands.

“- Yeah, go to Walter Reed, a place that sounds very important”

and is very important. And then work on Havana syndrome. - It's also like lie about your qualifications. Get ready for a different job in this administration. - Phil upwards.

- Yeah, exactly. - We're a man. The Patricia principle, yes, it's very inspiring. - So we would pretty quickly through Dr. Nashwatt because it's such a cut-and-dry story, right?

The second nominee was a real like hold my beer situation.

- Okay, it's time for nominee number two, Casey Means. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - Mike, what have you heard about Casey Means? Just as she's like, nice shot,

but like 50 times more deranged. - Yeah. - It's funny that her nomination was pulled, essentially 'cause she wasn't deranged enough. They're like, okay, let's get you someone to read.

- Do you want cookie? - Yeah, we got cookie for you, baby. - Yeah.

“- She is a graduate of Stanford University,”

both undergrad and medical school. She runs a wellness startup called Levels and she practices, quote unquote functional medicine, which is essentially like a rebrand of what in the 90s would have been called Alternative Medicine.

- It's medicine, but this time it's functional. - This time it's person. - Have you tried putting an onion in your sock and going just for the very functional? - So she has kind of two origin stories

coming into Maha world. The first is her residency. After completing medical school at Stanford, Casey Means took on a five year residency at Oregon Health and Science University here in Portland.

So she takes on this residency at OHSU, specializing in head and neck surgery. - Okay. - But as she moves through her residency, she says she became disillusioned with a system

that puts so much pressure and strain on doctors,

a system that was always intervening after things went wrong

and not to help them go right to begin with. And in a system with such a pernicious profit motive. - Whatever.

“- Yeah, so I got into a different part of medicine”

that also has a profit motive. - Right. - Selling MRIs to fucking celebrities. - Her story is that she was in a state of great exhaustion and disillusionment and just six months shy

of finishing her five year residency. She quit. - Okay. - Again, she says this is like because she became so disillusioned with the system and we're actually gonna watch

a little clip of her telling that story to Tucker Carlson. - Okay. - Yeah, you know, I'm in the operating room my fifth year of my surgical residency and I'm looking down at a patient in front of me

who's on our third revision sinus surgery. And you know, I know how to diagnose her. I know how to write the prescriptions. I know how to do the surgery, but what I kind of realized in that moment was like,

I have no idea why this patient's actually sick. She has so many other health issues, pre-diabetes arthritis, she's got some brain fog, she's got obesity and she's got this sinus issue.

And in my training, you know, I was never ever, ever taught

to look at the whole patient, to look at how all these things are connected. And I was only taught how to, you know, do the surgery and then bill for it. And I realized that there's a huge problem

in how we're practicing medicine right now, which is what we're ignoring the root causes of why Americans are sick. And we're profiting off of patients getting sick and then doing things to them.

That's the way the business model of health care works. You know, the most, the way that health care, which is the largest and fastest growing industry in the United States makes money, is you have more patients in the system

having more things done to them for longer periods of time. And when I kind of put some of these pieces together and realize that my training had totally, essentially incapacitated me from really understanding why patients are sick and how to actually help them thrive.

I actually had to walk away from the surgical world because I realized that I was only making money off of essentially not spending time helping patients understand their health and actually just profiting off their illness.

- So in nine years in, to medical training, it's Stanford, you gave it up voluntarily. - I, on my birthday, 30th birthday, I walked into the office of the chair of the department and I put down the scalpel and I walked away and I devoted my life

to why our Americans getting sick or every year, why are 50% of American children dealing with a chronic health issue? - This was less than 1% 50 years ago. - This frustrates the shit, Edamy.

- Yeah, tell me. - Obviously, there's like some kernel of like a reasonable critique of the medical system in here, obviously, but the problem with this whole root causes analysis is it's not clear how you would operationalize this.

Any medical system, even if you do address the clinical root causes, you still have doctors

A head and next surgeon wouldn't be addressing

things like diet and lifestyle to prevent that in the first place.

Obviously, we need to do more preventative medicine, but you're still going to have people who need surgeries. - Right, and like if you are aiming at, as she is, a structural critique, then you also need to have a structural solution.

- Yeah, exactly. - And she doesn't fucking have that. There's a weird kind of judgment behind this. She's like, I had this fat and sick patient and they wanted me to do the surgery on her without exploring why she's fat and sick.

Do you think that fat people who have a lot of no car accident or some sort of accident or some sort of condition don't deserve surgery? - I'm so sorry, I've become hopelessly distracted by the Tucker Carlson's store merch

that has advertised underneath the video clip. Wait, really? In the clip that I just sent you, underneath the description, it says, "Shop the Tucker Carlson's store. They have mugs that say, "A pack and offer you can't refuse."

- What? - And hats that say, "Neocons are gay for war." (laughing) - Okay, how many did they cost? Did I go on?

(bell dings) - I'm done. Part of the reason I got so distracted is I was like, "I don't know what this means." Yes, you do.

- I don't. - You love it. I know what it means if it's coming from me or you. I don't know what it means when it's coming from Tucker. - I can hear you clicking by

at like typing in your address to get a ship to you. - You take my money, Tucker Carlson. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. (laughing) - Oh no.

Woo!

“So that is one of Kasey Means origin stories, right?”

Is her, so that's the one. - Okay. - That's one of the two that we're going to talk about.

The second comes a few years later.

Oh God, I gotta get the giggles out 'cause this is a sad one. - Yeah. - Okay, yeah. - Do you want me to recite some creed lyrics to you?

- Did that help? - No, I have that in front of me still. - I'm gonna close the Tucker Carlson link so I'm not staring at the neocons or gay for what we have. (laughing)

- Okay, sorry, I apologize for what my brain just did. - All right, rough transition, get us there. - So Kasey Means's second origin story comes a few years later with the sudden death of her mother. - Okay.

- In January of 2021, her mother got the shocking news that she had stage four pancreatic cancer and that her prognosis was not good. According to Kasey, doctors pressured her mom to get risky surgery that would only extend her life

by a matter of months. And because of COVID protocols at the time,

“that recovery time would happen in quarantine, right?”

So they wouldn't be, she would have the surgery, she'd have this long recovery time, she wouldn't be able to see her family and they had already said she had like a short timeline. Okay, as you and I both know,

this is sort of part and parcel of having a family member who has a terminal illness, right? Is that you have these terrible choices to make where you're like, oh, nothing's a win, cool. - And on some level that is a,

I think fair critique of the medical system that it is split into these like little specialties and like, you know, my father recently died of cancer. And the same thing kind of happened to him that he was given all these weird treatments

that had miserable side effects. And he would sometimes say this actually isn't worth it for me. And his doctor's like he got in kind of like fights with his doctors about it. They would be like, well, you need this.

And like the minute he switched to palliative care, he got like a way better bedside manner. Yeah, there's a long time of kind of like fighting with doctors about this kind of thing.

And they weren't always totally transparent

with like how much benefit is this actually going to give me? - Totally, it's like a fair critique of the medical system and it's also like a, it's like a horrible experience. - Yeah. - And your emotions are in a place where like,

like I definitely needed to like fact check and ground myself a couple of times and be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Hey, did I have a fight with this person? Or did they just say something that reminded me of a terrible way that I already feel?

- Exactly, I actually wonder, I mean, it's at least plausible that the doctor sort of presented the options to her. There is the surgery, it's risky. It's not going to prolong your life that much,

but it's an option. - Yeah. - People were really nice to my dad and he was like, oh, I prefer to go on palliative care. They're like, okay, that's the choice that you can make.

- Yep. - He could still say no thanks and move on to something else. - My family member who passed of cancer recently was very clear about what he wanted in his treatment and what he did not want.

“And there was like, I think a lot of that”

from doctors being like, all right, well, you're making your choice. Got it. - Yeah. - Clearly, it's not the thing I would recommend, but like this is your life and your choice.

- You don't want to gaslight them about their experience, but she's just such a unreliable narrator. - Right. - That it's like, okay, what was actually happening with this interaction?

- So I just sent you a quote. This is an excerpt from her book.

- My mom made it clear to the oncologist

that she was not afraid of her rapidly impending death, but she wanted to minimize unnecessary pain or nausea in her final days. Despite being clear, the system pushed the exact procedures that would yield pain and nausea and aggressively shamed

our family for questioning the full court press approach. The doctor was not consciously trying to recommend to suboptimal procedure, but I knew the invasive route would generate hundreds of thousands of dollars for the hospital and this doctor's pay was tied

to booking these procedures. The private motive thing is also true.

“I think it affects your psychology and ways”

that are probably invisible to you. - Sure. - But again, she's just like an unreliable narrator. - And she's doing, I would say, a similar thing to what she was doing on Turner Carlson,

which is she's going from this intense personal experience,

straight to this sort of like, I'm not saying, I'm just saying, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it is designed to cast as spursions on the field, right? And on treatment recommendations that are being given to people who are in life and death scenarios, right?

Like what she's doing here is sort of using like a very emotional personal experience, which again, both you and I have been through in different ways, right? She is using that to kind of shake the foundation

and go, what a whole thing is built. - Right, exactly. 'Cause it's also totally plausible that her doctor was just a huge fucking asshole. And so maybe you had a really bad experience

with this complete prick. That's absolutely plausible, but she is making it a bigger argument

“about the medical system and for profit, health care,”

et cetera, et cetera, which again, you'd have to sort of marshal different kinds of evidence to support, yeah, I don't know. It was your issue. You would actually move us toward a universal health care

system where the doctors just get paid salaries, which is actually what they have in many countries. That would be the thing that you would then start pushing toward. You wouldn't then leave the system and start selling people other shit for profit.

That's just what destroys her entire credibility to me. - Her functional medicine clinic is in the Pearl District, in Portland, Pearl District, parentheses, derogatory. - Yes, yes, Michael.

- So when I was growing up, the Pearl was like a predominantly industrial area, there were significant numbers of homeless folks. And when I was in maybe middle school or high school, it started getting gentrified to the fucking max.

So now those industrial buildings are overwhelmingly like luxury condos and lofts.

“- She's like the medical system is kind of a grift,”

and I wanna get in on that grift. - It feels very telling that you go to the wealthiest after that, when my dad was a teacher at dental school, he also had a systemic critique, because these profit motives were starting to take over

dentistry at the time, and he started volunteering at a homeless shelter to do dentistry on homeless people. There's like other things that you can do. - Yeah, that's right. - There's been this, you know?

- Cainz means is a really interesting mix of crunchy granola, maha, style, stuff, and really died in the wool conservative pedigree. In order to understand that conservative pedigree, we have to talk about the other two surviving members

of her immediate family, both of whom are high profile conservatives. The first of those is her father, Grady Means, who was a longtime Republican operative in DC. - Okay.

- He worked for Nixon and after Nixon's resignation for Vice President Nelson Rockefeller during the Ford Administration. During the Ford Administration, he worked on the food and nutrition task force,

which sought among other things to dramatically scale back food stamps. - There's that systemic critique, baby. - Right, the like food is medicine, ladies, dad, is the reason that fewer people have the medicine food

that she wants everyone to have. - For we got too much food. - Grady also worked as a consultant before selling off the consulting wing

of his firm for $3.5 billion in 2002.

- Billion. - So that's her dad, Grady Means. She also has a brother named Cali Means, which the description on this Tucker Carlson YouTube video tells me has also been interviewed by Tucker Carlson.

- Yes, correct. - So they have become a little bit of like a package deal. They're sort of one or two punch in Mahawar and they co-authored their book together. - Oh, okay. - Cali Means went to Stanford undergrad

and went to Harvard for his MBA. He interned both for the George W. Bush White House and for the Heritage Foundation. - Nice. - He worked on the McCain campaign,

reportedly as part of the quote unquote pit crew that was working to improve Sarah Palin's reputation.

(laughing)

“His fiercely sending her links to schoolhouse rock.”

He describes himself as a former never-trumper

who became one of RFK juniors advisors after that appearance on Tucker Carlson. Cali Means is an entrepreneur who founded a company called True Med, which helps people apply for HSA coverage of like Peloton Bikes and Infraredson.

- Oh, I really, he's trying to get people reimbursed for like alternative medicines. - Yep, so health savings accounts, HSAs are tax-free accounts. You essentially are allowed to set aside money that you're going to spend on health care,

not be taxed on that money and spend that money tax-free. - Yeah. - Functionally, there's been a bunch of research into this. It really just ends up benefiting rich people who want to pay less in taxes out there.

Luxury, health and fitness purchases, right? True Med allows people to log onto their website, fill out a quick survey and get delivered a letter of medical necessity that allows their purchase and covered by HSA partners.

“In exchange, True Med takes a cut of the sales.”

- Oh, okay, okay, that's scammy. - So they've been used for like red light therapy devices, including the like skin care, red light masks. They've been used for supplements, for smart mattresses,

their vanity fair did an incredible deep dive piece

into Cali means, I strongly recommend it. And as part of that, they got their hands on some early True Med marketing materials, which at its outset focused on rebranding companies like sweet green and daily harvest as health care.

- Yes, buddy. (laughing) - My daily salad is actually a prescription. - My dad did cut food stamps. - But, now my work lunch is health care.

So the means siblings both have very close ties with the sweet green guy, the daily harvest. - Oh, really? - All of these people are people that they know and work with very frequently through the quote-unquote

end chronic disease coalition. - How do I know that's a scam? - Right, right.

“- Any other time in history, you're like,”

oh, any chronic disease, that sounds good but, like, nope. My brain is too broken from doing this show. - The coalition is mostly, they're advocating for something called the Hope Act, the health out-of-pocket expense act,

which would expand eligible uses for HSA dollars and the end chronic disease coalition, which RFK junior and other folks on the right will like, "Tout."

Oh my god, Cali means work with this incredible coalition.

The coalition is largely made up of companies whose products would be covered under those proposed expanded rules. - So it sounds like nice, like, oh, we're expanding the HSA, but it's actually just like, you're gonna get

profits out of this basically. - And the name of the coalition is end chronic disease. Like, oh my god, this guy's so dedicated to ending chronic disease, no fucking knot. He's dedicated to selling his buddies like food

and then taking a cut of those sales. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So, Michael, are you ready for Cali means origin story? - Oh yeah, give it to me. - Cali means says that he was a lobbyist

for big food and big pharma, okay. And then he saw firsthand the kind of corruption at play there. On one podcast, he claimed among other things that he brokered a deal between the American Diabetes

Association and Coca-Cola. - What? - That it's like hush money to like stop opposing us in public or whatever. And I was just like, dude, what are we doing?

So he's doing it like confessions of an assassin, kind of thing where he's like, oh, I brokered these evil deals. - Yes, confessions of a lobbyist. - Yeah.

- On Tucker Carlson's podcast, he claims to have attended a meeting where food corporations were, quote, paying off nutrition researchers at Harvard and Stanford. And he alleged on Twitter that in his time

as a lobbyist for food corporations, that Coca-Cola gave quote unquote millions to the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation, in exchange for publicly calling any policies hindering soda sales as racist?

- (screams) - Okay. - Describing the whole thing is quote unquote depressingly transaction. - It's like really verifiable claims, but whatever.

- So Vanity Fair in this deep dive piece, fact checked him and his story simply did not check out. - Yeah, of course not. - They interviewed more than 60 people who had worked with Cali Means,

nine of his former colleagues from PR world

- Okay.

- Where Cali Means claimed that he had been

a quote unquote director at Mercury, brokering these high-level deals. His colleague said he was an executive assistant who wouldn't have even been in the room for the deals that he said he gave assistant

as Ella Bunny. (laughs) - It's as removed as you could be from the halls of power that you're talking about. - They're like, "Hey, can you grab us a cup of coffee?" - Yeah, I was in the room.

- The room where it happens, that's right. - Yeah. - Not only do they dispute the roles that he held, they also dispute that they, the company's represented the clients that he claimed.

- Nice. - So in the three years that Cali Means worked at Mercury, they didn't represent Coca-Cola nor did they represent the American Beverage Association Mercury,

which is where Cali Means was working,

was working the other side of the issue. They were campaigning to reduce soda consumption, and their client was the California Endowment. - It's funny 'cause he could have just said, I was on the ground working to reduce

the influence of big food. Like I was advocating against soda companies. He could have just said that, but instead he's like creating his weird narrative. - Right, it's a really strange thing to sort of manufacture

“a heel pattern that you don't have to have had, right?”

The vanity fair piece also uncovered some real gems about Cali Means as a coworker. I just say you a quote. - It says, "At the office, several colleagues recall "his air of self-importance.

"He seemed to have bigger and better plans ahead, "which didn't include them." He walked around the office saying,

Cali Means Business, wait, Cali Means Business,

he walked around the office saying, Cali Means Business, another former colleague, or Cali Means. That's like his cute little, it's almost like a bumper sticker phrase

for like when he runs for Congress. - Totally. - Cali Means Business. - Can you, I just want you to imagine an executive assistant who is trying

to get into or something? Who's like trying to get into every strategy conversation? - Yeah, yeah. - He's acting like they're better than everybody around them at like a pretty high powered firm where they're very junior.

- Yeah, yeah. - And they're walking around just buttering Cali Means Business to themselves like, what a fucking door, a real pearl district resident. (laughing)

- The way I think of him. - Just the kind of guy living the pearl district. - So that's crazy means in Cali Means.

“It felt important to lift up that Casey Means”

because she sounds kind of like Portland, Maha crunchy granola e, it felt really important to establish just how committed to extreme conservatism. - Yeah, family is. - I'm so curious how this nomination fell apart now

because all of this so far sounds like everyone in the term administration which just loved these people. - Right. - And welcome them with arms wide open.

- Baby. (laughing) - Mm. (laughing) - Well Michael, when it comes to this story,

can I take you higher? (laughing) - That's all of my crazy sounds that we're done. - I know the title of two songs, the end. So back to Casey Means, unlike her predecessor,

Dr. Nashwatt, Casey Means Basic CV checks out. She did graduate from Stanford, undergrad in 2009 and from Stanford School of Medicine in 2014, she did go on to pursue her residency at OHSU.

It was a five year program, but she dropped out six months before completing it. She did get a medical license, but it has now been inactive for a couple of years. She has offered two reasons for leaving her program.

One is that sort of state of American health care thing. And the other is the stress and pressure of her surgical residency. After leaving her residency, she opens her functional medicine practice called Means Health in 2019.

The same year that she opened her functional medicine practice, she also co-founded levels, a health tech company that sells continuous glucose monitors and lab testing services. - Okay. - As well as quote unquote, AI insights.

- There it is. - There it is. - A full membership to levels for a year, including glucometers costs about $1,500 per year. I'm so against profit medicine.

The problem with medicine is all of the profit. That's why I charge you $1,500.

“That's why it's like a hundred more than a hundred”

fucking dollars a month. - So she found levels and her functional medicine clinic in 2019 and in 2020 COVID hits. Casey Means takes that as an opportunity. - Of course.

- And submits an LTE to the journal metabolism,

In it, she argues that metabolic dysfunction is a core issue for COVID-19 and that managing blood sugar in a data-driven way

“was an essential intervention for COVID.”

- Oh, so by my product. - So she submits this letter in April of 2020 by November of 2020.

She had reportedly raised $12 million in seed funding

for levels. - Okay. - By 2022, the company was reportedly valued at $300 million. - Wow, okay. - It is then 2022 during Calian Casey Means appearance

on the Tucker Carlson show that really establishes them in the right wing just asking questions circuit. From there, they both start doing the rounds, showing up on Joe Rogan's show and a ton of like right wing podcasts, right?

After the Tucker Carlson thing, that really seems to be way below things wide open. It's also reportedly where RFK Junior comes across their work, right? All of that leads up to the release of Calian Casey Means

book in 2024, which is called Good Energy, the surprising connection between metabolism and limitless health. - How is it not called means tested? (laughing)

They have so many puns at their disposal. Think of the possibilities. Clean means healthcare machine. - Clean means is great. - They're leaving grips on the table.

- In promotion of the book, they publish an excerpt on the free press. - Of course, the excerpt on the website is titled,

I'm a doctor who shouldn't always trust us.

The chapter in the book is titled, "Trust yourself, not your doctor." This website loves laundering most far-right garbage. But like through the mouths of experts who went to all of these like IV and IV adjacent institutions,

like I read the whole book, Calian Casey Means, both say some very accurate reasonable criticisms of the US healthcare system. They also write really compellingly about the shortcomings of the food system

and the heartbreak of people needing to pay more money than they have just to stay healthy or stay alive.

“- And that's why we've joined the Republican Party.”

- Right, let's make all of these things worse. - Right, so in talking about the importance of like eating whole foods and healthy fats, rather than directly increasing access to those things through like snap or wick,

they instead shift to this personal responsibility frame. - Yeah, yeah. - Saying that like it's actually on you to make sure that you're eating very expensive ingredients, she's an anti-seed oil lady, so she's like,

- Yeah. - Right, like by the oil that is like five or six times as much. - Right. - They are totally silent on like how any of this would be possible for low-income families.

- Right, and they're just, of course, as usual just inflating the ability of like a virtuous lifestyle to solve all of these issues. Like you did something wrong if you get one of these chronic conditions.

That's the ideology. - On the press tour for the book, she becomes a real hot-take factory. She has said that quote, "Many if not most COVID-19 deaths could be prevented with optimal metabolic health."

- Nice. - And called COVID, a quote, "Darwinian moment for America." - Oh, what? What in the good way? - Yeah, like the least fit did not survive way.

- Just saying it, they're out here just fucking saying it. She also has some anti-vax positions

“that I think are dressed up to appear more moderate”

than they are in her newsletter. She wrote, quote, "There is growing evidence that the total burden of the current extreme and growing vaccine schedule is causing health declines in vulnerable children."

- Oh, vulnerable, are you looking up for the vulnerable? Like even in the measles, it's so important that they get measles. - She has said, quote, "I think vaccine mandates are criminal."

I mean, they are in the scent that we never fucking had them

in America, so whatever. She said that in response to somebody on Twitter giving her shit for not being anti-vax enough. And she was like, "I have said innumerable public time." - I love that.

I'm actually, I'm the most anti-vax. - I'm actually pretending when I say any more research and stuff. I'm actually super anti-vax, don't worry about it. - My girl, are we having a good time?

(laughing) - Did you see my money? - Isn't this fun? - It's kind of fun, I'm having fun. - This is like my parents on road trips as a kid.

- This is fun, right? - She has written, quote, "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. - I want buying food to be just constant fucking sure,

and do all the work myself, I would love that. The way that you know, if there is Listeria in milk is a good hard look in the eye. - I want other people to have the freedom to fucking lie to my face about the health and back

to their product. She is also a proponent of both syllocybin and MDMA. She like shrumes, she likes molly. - Why are all these people into fucking psychedelics? It's so fascinating.

All they do is bitch about like prosak and stuff. But they're like, no, no, no, take these other drugs. It's so weird.

“- Yeah, I mean, I think there's like a rift, right?”

Both within Maha world and within Republican world, writ large, where you have sort of older school Republicans who are like drugs, and you have this sort of like newer wave of like red bill, fucking assholes, and we're like drugs, yeah.

It becomes a liability because it exposes that rift, which doesn't often get tested in like federal policy making, right? - Right. - So in addition to all of those hot takes,

sometimes her hot takes take the form of poetry. - Okay. - For April Fool's Day. She wrote a poem for her newsletter. As she notes, she got, quote, some help from AI.

I'm sending you four verses from a poem that has like 20 verses, like there's so many. So I just picked a piece. - She put it in full in her newsletter. The title of the poem is The Devil's Wellness Plan.

- I'm not reading, this is way too much operating.

“- You're reading it, my goal, you're reading it.”

- If I were the devil, I ditched the disguise. No pitchfork, no flames, just marketing lies. I'd feed you poison, call it a snack, and label you a leadist when you want your health back. I'd bury research, seal the locks,

then line you up for 73 shots, doesn't rhyme.

I'd cancel critical thinking, stop dissenters with bots,

then jab your kids without a second thought. Also, doesn't really rhyme. I'd break your trust in ancient ways and mock the moon and cycles phase. I'd push the pill and dull women's flame

to womenhood for God its name. I'd give boys' man boobs through toxic food and call masculine strength aggressive and rude. I'd whisper, you're too much too loud and shame men's fire as something rude.

- There you go. (laughs) - I miscred Aubrey, can I go back to Creed? - Like, he's a professional. You can't expect her to be on his level. - That at least had like an okay, like pentameter or whatever.

It was at least the correct number of syllables. So, good energy, Cali and Casey Means book came out in 2024 by May of 2025, if Casey Means was announced as the Trump administration's nominee for Surgeon General.

- Nice. - That is so far to get in such a short period of time. The reactions to Casey Means nomination are swift and they are negative. - This means war.

- So, a number of former Surgeons General come forward and are like absolutely fucking not Jerome Adams actually writes an op-ed about it and is like, hey, part of your job as the head of the U.S. Public Health Service is to weed out

people who don't have license to practice and Casey Means does not have an active medical license. - Oh right, yeah. - There is criticism from Mahafoax who once again criticized her for not being anti-vax enough.

- Really even her? - Uh-huh. - Bucket L. - Once again, queen Gremlin, Laura Lumer, ways in on Twitter.

- I just sent you a quote. - Casey Means said, when she was looking for romance, she would do shrumes, talk to trees, participate in full moon ceremonies and pray to inanimate objects with a spiritual medium.

So basically, the new Surgeon General is a total crackpot,

a shrume consumer, and she talks to trees and doesn't even have an active medical license. Another failure by the geniuses who work for President Trump on his non-existent bedding team. I guess there isn't a single conservative doctor in America

who doesn't have a history of being a Marxist rehugger. This is bizarre. Casey Means is like a complete nutcase. They should love this lady. - The reactions to her nomination are so bad

on Twitter in particular that RFK Jr. rushes to her defense on the platform. He says that Mahafoax is taking on powerful corporate players and that those companies, quote, will continue to pay bloggers and other social media influencers to weaponize

in UNDOT to slander and vilify Casey. The same way they try to defame me and President Trump.

- The fights between these people are always just like

the Spider-Man meme of people pointing to each other. It's like vaguely different shades of lunatic. It's like why they're mad at her.

“- I mean, I think this is part of what makes me feel”

less despairing about this episode is that early on

and his priorities being on kind of a pretty direct collision

“course with the Trump administration, right?”

That he's like, I want to regulate corporations or ban all this advertising on above and Trump is the guy who's like, let corporations do whatever the fuck they want and that the Mahafoalition was like sort of like looking for a home and Republicans

offered them a home, right? But the rift and the sort of differences in disconnects are starting to show and part of the way that that's starting to show is in these kinds of like infighting moments and part of the way that's starting to show is in having

three nominees for Surgeon General and not having one still. - And also these, the whole Mahafoing, you can't have a stable coalition when it's built on the back

of lies and misinformation because everyone is ultimately

just making shit up and cherry picking. You don't have like a referee or like an objective standard of facts to point to, to adjudicate a dispute about like, do shrooms work or are shrooms bad? They don't give a shit about what actual science looks like

so you can't really have like a good faith debate even within these coalitions. - Right, it's all power games, right? - Yeah. - So on top of all those negative reactions,

there's also this new wave of reporting

“about like, who is this new Surgeon General nominee?”

And one of the things that they find in that reporting is that there are pretty significant gaps between how she describes her residency and how other people at her residency described her, at her residency.

- Okay.

- Vanity Fair interviewed the chair of the department

and where her residency took place who said that Casey Means found the job quote unquote too stressful that she quit in tears and that other residents had to quote cover for her and wear a small department and all the calls fall on them.

- No way, that's also a structural critique of the American medical system. People are so overworked. - Yeah. - But yeah, it's also funny that she makes it

as like virtuous like I chose to leave things. - Two other residents who served with her in the same department at the same time said that she was very anxious and primarily like a freight of hurting patients.

- As she tried to zinc.

“- As she tried to take a different time, I think.”

- It just made it to her lifestyle. - So all of this leads up to Casey Means confirmation hearing which happened in February of this year. Her initial confirmation hearing was scheduled for October 2025 but it was postponed when she went into labor with her child.

- So she got maternity leave basically.

Something the administration is also decided against. - Initially the confirmation hearing is scheduled for October. It ends up taking place in February after her parental leave and in that time the conditions and the sort of political calculus here really change.

Among other things, the chair of the committee where the confirmation hearing will happen, the health committee is Bill Cassidy. Bill Cassidy is in that intervening time defeated in his Republican primary

by a Trump endorsed challenger to the right. - Okay. - Bill Cassidy is now a lame duck with serious like flameduck potential. But there's also a longstanding drift between Senator Cassidy and President Trump

dating back to at least 2021 when Cassidy voted to convict Trump of inciting a riot on January 6th. Okay. - He's a physician who did practice for a long time

in a lot of situations. Right, like say what you fucking will about Bill Cassidy, I'm not gonna cape for any Louisiana Republicans at this point. But he is an actual doctor who did actually practice,

who does actually have a medical license, all of that does feel relevant here. - There's also a long history of Republicans like kind of doing the right thing once they don't have an election to win anymore.

- Totally. - So like as I have told you, I'm not a fan of congressional hearings, they feel like political theater, they feel like they're not accomplishing anything. They're definitely not fact-finding missions,

like ever, right? I think that this confirmation hearing was pretty effective as political theater. - Cool. - They had like a really clear good division of labor,

folks had drafted their questions in a really tight way and came in with like a pretty unified front across party lines. bizarrely, Josh Hawley is like, hey, I need to talk to you about what I'm hearing

from my constituents, which is their concern about the health risks of AI data centers. - What? - I will say, Hawley kind of softballs it

and he's like, whoa, I didn't bet you to give it some thought, but he's not like an asshole to her about it. He's not like confrontational about it at all, but he does raise it up and is like, these are the kinds of things that people are concerned

about, they're concerned about water quality that looks like this.

hey, this is an issue.

- It is all theater though,

'cause they none of them give a shit about any of this stuff, but whatever. Totally theater, but it was surprising to me that if you're doing a performance and the performance of every Republican at this point

is to some degree just for Donald Trump, his willingness to push back in that way. I was like, oh, that's interesting. - It's weird, yeah. - But he's not the only Republican on the committee

who has sort of more direct and sort of harder questions for her. At one point, Senator Cassidy asked her if she believed that vaccines cause autism. This is after the Pam Bondi hearings,

so it's clear that she's trying to like moderate her response and not be cookie and start yelling about like, "The Dow!" - Yeah, yeah.

- So her response to Cassidy's question

about vaccines and autism is, quote, "We have an autism crisis that is increasing." This is devastating to many families and we do not know as a medical community what causes autism.

- Which I can see the anti-vaxxers being mad about that. - It's the one answer that we don't actually know what causes autism is the one answer that is guaranteed to piss off everybody. - She should have just said they fucking cause autism

and then like the anti-vaxxers would get on her side. - Tentos down, standing on business. - Yeah, yeah. - So in that same hearing, Tim Cane asks her about flu shots, which is not a huge part

of the anti-vaxx discourse, right? And so I just sent you, we're gonna watch clip. I apologize in advance for how infuriating this clip is to listen to. (upbeat music)

- In a news report on January 7,

just a month or so ago, Secretary Kennedy stated, quote, "There is no evidence that the flu vaccine prevents serious disease or that it prevents hospitalization or deaths in children.

Do you agree with that statement?"

“Senator Cain, as I've said, I believe vaccines saved lives”

and are an important part of it. - I'm not asking about it again. I heard that testimony earlier, but your NMD, your qualifications have been much discussed earlier. Do you agree with the statement that there's no evidence

that the flu vaccine prevents serious disease or that it prevents hospitalizations or deaths in children? - I have not, personally, seen that quote or that article. - I want to review it, I don't know what I decide on that.

- Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna set the quote aside, I'll introduce for the writer. - She's so bad at this. - Particle CBS News, RFK Jr says it may be better if fewer children receive

the flu vaccine data January 7, 2026. - With that objection. - Do you believe that there is evidence that the flu vaccine prevents serious disease and prevents hospitalization or deaths in children?

- I believe that all patients should talk to their doctor. I'm not saying so to one, and that's not what I'm asking. Your qualifications have been much discussed. There is a mountain of evidence about this. Do you believe that there's no evidence

that the flu vaccine has efficacy in reducing serious injury or hospital, and say, you would see the little hamster wheel in her brain. - This is an easy one, doctor. This is an easy one.

- I support the CDC's guidance on the flu vaccine. - And I, she's like filming with the CDC ASAP and the AIDS. - So you believe it is an efficacious vaccine to reduce hospitalization and. - ASAP is not.

- Yes, you believe it is. - As I said, I support the CDC's guidance on the flu vaccine. - Let me just say, do you think the flu vaccine

“reduces the risk of hospitalization or serious injury?”

- You're a doctor. - I believe that seeing saved lives. - The flu vaccine. - Public health strategy. - The flu vaccine, does it reduce

the risk of injury or hospital? - At the population level, I certainly think that it. - Let me introduce for the record if I can, Mr. Chair, CDC's seasonal flu vaccine effectiveness. These dated May 30, 20, 25 from the CDC

that goes into this in some detail. This is not a hard question. - I answered your question. - And yes, after three minutes, you acknowledge that at a population level.

- I haven't seen that report, I have not seen it. - Yeah, but you know about the flu vaccine. - If I had a nickel for every time, I was misquoted in the media. I'd be a very wealthy woman.

- I would like to introduce you to what his comment. - I'm not asking you about the quote. I'm asking you about something in your remid, the effect of the flu vaccine. (upbeat music)

- Stunning. He did eventually get her to admit it, which is actually interesting that she did.

“- I think it's again an indicator of how bad she is at this.”

- Yeah, yeah. - Part of what sinks her in this hearing is that she keeps trying to rely on these phrases like I believe vaccine saved lives, or I support the CDC guidance.

- She clearly also didn't know what the CDC guidance was,

so most of it is still pretty prophaxing at this point.

- It's all the doge guys being asked to define what DEI is, and they're like, it's whatever it was in the EO, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Another piece that becomes like a big challenge for Casey Means is her financial conflict,

which are significant. Of course, she owns and operates levels her sort of medical equipment slash wellness startup. But on top of that, as we've mentioned, she has a really strong presence on sub-stack

and Instagram and social media sort of writ large. And it becomes clear that she has failed to disclose many, many financial relationships. - Okay. - And in her newsletter on Instagram

on social media broadly, she is frequently recommending products. - Oh. - Right.

- And like not disclosing those FTC regulations,

we have to say like #sponsored or whatever. - Correct. - Yeah. - Those regulations, those regulations about disclosing when something is an ad on social media,

came into effect after fire fest. That's why we got those fucking things. And she's like doing a wellness fire fest, of like not disclosing. The associated press investigated her disclosures

and found that she had been taking big payments that she did not disclose publicly. $59,000 from function, health, mark highman's company. - Oh, yeah, of course.

- $12,000 from daily harvest, $16,000 from florossafee. (screams) (laughs) (laughs)

Company. - That's like a fake word that she made up for one of her poems in a rhyme. - $27,000 from energy bits, okay. - LG supplement company.

“- Wait, what was it when we talked about in the boys?”

That's a food cube, or whatever. (laughs) It's getting cube bucks. - $500 from we natal, prenatal vitamins. - Oh, that's pretty good, actually.

- And $130,000 from amazing tests.

- Oh, oh. - A supplement company. Also, $200,000 from Tati Westbrook's hair vitamins. (laughs) - That's right, bye sister.

- Uh-huh. - I will also say not for fucking nothing. In her confirmation hearing, one of the members of the committee is Bernie Sanders, who questions her on stuff.

And mostly is like, hey, I agree. We should ban junk food advertising. Hey, good point on this thing. - Yeah, everyone's going out of their way to do this shit. - Bernie Sanders is like trying to sort of be like,

you know, I disagree with the Trump administration a lot of stuff, but I think you've got some good points here. - Yeah. - And then like posts a clip on social media. And it's like, hey, we had a real one,

who's still a good conversation. Like, I don't agree with her on everything, but I support her in this thing. And people just like, absolutely shredded him on it. And was like, you don't gotta hand it to her.

- This is why these people make these disingenuous, plausible sounding arguments is because they attract people who want to give them credit and want to give them good faith. But these people are not acting in good faith.

You cannot listen to what they say. You have to look at what they fucking do. - Correct. - What is she doing with her life? There's no fucking way these people are like,

oh, I just want to fix the diet of Americans. Is that what Arche Jr. has spent the last 20 years of his life dedicated to? No, he's dedicated it to fucking getting kids infected with measles.

“That's what they actually believe you have to ignore”

all this bullshit. They are saying that as a fucking trap, as bait to get people who do not care or do not know about their actual background, to do exactly what Bernie is doing.

- 100% I was like, this is uncharacteristically like anti-shrewed. - Also for just a failed fucking candidate. - Two here. - It's really a strength.

It's clear by this point that she's not gonna make it through. So on April 30th of this year, in a truth social post, Donald Trump acknowledged that Casey Means didn't have the votes to be confirmed. She will also be joining Walter Reed.

Unsurprisingly, Trump claims Bill Cassidy, the chair, yeah, help committee. But also, they're appear to be holdouts that were Cassidy Collins and Mercowski. We're all like, I don't know.

- Okay. - After the administration withdraws Casey Means nomination, the political landscape starts to shift again. New polls come out revealing that changing the vaccine schedule is hugely unpopular with voters.

Plus, the anti-vax stuff has faced a large number of court challenges,

“so it is costly and time-consuming to defend against, right?”

So they're really testing like how much political capital the Trump administration is willing to spend on ma hop priorities. - And this is more of an RFK thing than a Trump thing.

So we're seeing how far is Trump willing to go for RFK junior, right?

“And not as far as Casey Means is the answer.”

- Yes.

- That's when they announced the newest third and newest current nominee,

Nicole Sapphire, is her name. She went to Arizona State University for her undergrad. For her MD, she's telling us out front. She didn't go to med school in the US. - Okay.

- She went to Ross University in Barbados. - Is that like a for-profit scam factory? - It doesn't appear to be, I didn't look into Ross University to a great degree, because I was like, they're not gonna do that again, right?

But maybe you know, she is currently a radiologist at the Sloan Catering Cancer Center. - Hey, licensed doctor. - Huh? - Career as a public figure is a very maha,

like, gotta catch them all, kind of thing. She has a podcast, she has a supplement company, she's a Fox News contributor. - Oh, great. - She's written three books, love mom,

inspiring stories, celebrating motherhood. - Okay. - Make America healthy again. How bad behavior and big government caused a trillion dollar crisis. - Yep, the government's definitely the problem.

- She also published that before RFK junior was using maha. - Wait, really? - Uh-huh. - She tried to trade market, which is very funny, and then she sort of dropped it.

- Yeah. - She also podcast called Wellness Unmasked, and she wrote another book called Panic Attack, playing politics with the science in the fight against COVID-19.

- I could just write that book for memory. I could like sit down for a million, gross out. - You already know, lab leak, whatever. Dr. Sapphire's positions on core maha issues are often presented in a way that seems a little more moderate

than a casey means, which like, not hard to do.

“I think a good example on that is her position on vaccines.”

She, like casey means, is very strident in her vaccines, save lives, stance. But she has also said that the pediatric vaccine schedule should be, quote unquote, less stringent. - Yeah, there it is.

- And that she opposes vaccine mandates.

She has also been publicly and directly critical

of RFK junior's approach on vaccines, and that she's done that criticism in right of center media outlets. It's fascinating. - Okay.

- She's a real mixed bag. Most notably, she wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal just last year called the Madness in RFK Junior's autism method. - Woke queen, she's got my menu at that. - Comparatively, I heard she's a defund the police.

(laughing) I don't think she did. - She has publicly criticized Trump, but those posts are now deleted. So she's like, been speaking her mind,

but then doing the Trump nominee thing. - Yeah. - And scrubbing the record afterwards. - Right.

“She tweeted at one point, quote, "Seems like they may not want”

to admit the US measles elimination status is gone until after the midterms." - Nice. - On Trump's Tylenol warning, she posted quote, "As a mom of three kids, I don't love a man

telling me to tough it out when it comes to pregnancy." - Wow. - This is the bar is in hell, portioned, right? But also like, not a lot of people are exceeding the bar. - Right.

- So far, the reactions have been much less alarmed than last time. The reactions from people who sort of reacted to Casey Means,

the first time around, including past surgeons general,

those responses have been essentially like, this is a qualified nominee with an active medical license. (laughing) - It all feels like nothing it was, but all feels like a strategy to like,

we're gonna nominate the two worst fucking people alive. And then when we get to the third nominee, who's also trash, everything like whatever, folks have been worn down so hard. - I'm sleepy.

- Dr. Sapphire hasn't faced confirmation hearings yet. There is one thing that may become an issue in her hearings. She has a supplement brand called DropRx. It's called DropRx because it is herbal tankers, like liquid tankers and eyedropper bottles.

In true supplement biz form, their supplements are named things like boost, relief, allure, sleep, and intimacy. The case test episode incoming. - So there are two problems here.

One is Dr. Sapphire works for the Memorial Sloan Catering Cancer Center, which has a clear policy that bands employees from quote, endorsement of products or commercial ventures. It's also suspect as hell for a surgeon general, so she would likely need to divast, right,

as with casey means and levels. Problem number two is that their supplements include Kava, which the USDA and FDA warn is associated with significant liver damage, and which is regulated differently in different states.

- Cheap champagne? - What is Kava? - It is a route that is supposed to sort of promote

in supplements and some states you can serve it in the cafe

“and some states it's like band, completely.”

But the USDA and FDA have already issued warnings about it, so it's just real weird to have a surgeon general who is selling a product that runs counter to public health guidance from other agencies, right? - Too easy it is to find a practicing doctor

who isn't a fucking grifter. - It's crazy they can't find a single one. - They're all tree hugging marks, this is my (laughs)

for now she appears to be much more in the vein

of Dr. Nashwatt than his means. - Right.

“- And that honestly feels like a pretty grounded win”

to have someone who is not, who's like grifting from one angle but not like seven. (laughing) - That's as good as it gets in America. - And do what he's doing.

- Right now, she's only one kind of grifter. - Tell your blessing. She's only selling herbal tincture. - I know, she's a mono grifter. (laughing)

That's the best we can do. (laughing) At the start of this episode I started by saying that the research made me feel like less despairing. Here's why.

One, this is a place where the Trump administration is failing. They're not getting their nominees confirmed. - Yeah. - This is also true of other Trump nominees too. According to Brookings, the average confirmation delay

for Trump nominees has doubled from his first term

to his second. - Although in fairness, they are twice as bad this time. - They are pretty bad. - Yeah. - From a harm reduction standpoint,

I genuinely think it's more helpful to have no surge in general rather than one of these ultra-reliens. - And if the win, the case he means didn't get through 'cause she's a complete nutcase.

“- I think the last thing that makes me feel”

sort of like groundedly cautiously optimistic about all of this is that Trump is immensely unpopular right now. Which means that again, Republicans who are already pushing back on this committee are gonna be incentivized to push back more.

- Yeah. - You know, good news is few and far between at the moment. This is like a very, very, very low bar to meet. - Yeah. But I think we've got to accept the good news we get with long swaddle.

- Yeah, I know you're gonna go back to the house. (laughing) - What about us gonna do it? (laughing) (upbeat music)

(upbeat music)