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.”