Before Donald Trump nominated Dr. Nicole Saphier as his third pick for surgeon general, she spent months publicly torching the administration’s health agenda and then deleted the evidence.
Saphier built her public profile as a voice against vaccine misinformation and pseudoscience, including work personally funded by the man who would be her new boss, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Now, with her critical posts scrubbed and her nomination in hand, she’s poised to carry water for the same agenda she warned was making America less healthy.
New reporting from CNN and MS NOW reveals what she said before vying to become Trump’s surgeon general:
- Just two months before she was selected as President Donald Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Nicole Saphier suggested the administration was hiding that measles was spreading widely enough in the United States for the country to lose its “elimination” status until after the midterm elections.
- “Seems like they may not want to admit the U.S. Measles elimination status is is (sic) gone until after midterm elections,” Saphier wrote in March.
- Saphier also repeatedly criticized Trump’s messaging surrounding Tylenol use during pregnancy after the president publicly urged pregnant women to avoid the medication over unproven claims linking it to autism and told women to “tough it out” rather than take it for pain or fever.
- “As a mom of 3 kids, I don’t love a man telling me to ‘tough it out’ when it comes to pregnancy. Words matter. Facts matter too,” she wrote in a since-deleted post from September 2025. That same week, Saphier linked in another deleted tweet to a podcast episode calling the science linking Tylenol to autism “far from settled.”
- A month later, Saphier criticized a Trump post on Truth Social telling pregnant women not to take Tylenol. “This isn’t the first or second time he has said this. Obviously something was said to POTUS behind closed doors and the public deserves transparency on the data presented to substantiate these statements,” she said in the since-deleted post from October 2025.
- Days later, Saphier wrote, “My son has a high fever and I’m angry that I am now questioning giving him Tylenol. Do data exist showing harm to kids that haven’t been shared with the public or is the Tylenol ‘controversy’ purely hyperbolic and conjecture? Needless to say, I’m mad.” That post has also been deleted.
- Saphier also publicly questioned Trump’s own health transparency after he disclosed in October 2025 that he had undergone an MRI without specifying what it was for.
- “Lots of people questioning POTUS MRI — I have questions too,” Saphier wrote in one deleted post from October. But she also took aim at some of those raising the questions. “It’s hard to take some of these people seriously as they failed to have questions on Covid natural immunity, vaccines, masking, shutdowns and the fact Biden couldn’t string together a coherent sentence at times.”
- Saphier also repeatedly criticized Kennedy’s overhaul of federal vaccine policy and messaging, particularly surrounding the CDC and its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, known as ACIP.
- Saphier criticized Kennedy’s handpicked vaccine advisory group’s decisions in real time. In another deleted post from September 2025, Saphier accused ACIP of acting as a “gatekeeper” around the combined measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox vaccine despite the US Food and Drug Administration continuing to consider the vaccine safe for young children. She warned the conflicting guidance was leaving parents “confused” and children “less protected.”
- In another since-deleted September 2025 post, Saphier commented on the public dispute between former CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez and Kennedy after Monarez alleged that she had been instructed to pre-commit to approving ACIP vaccine recommendations, an accusation Kennedy denied.
- “The he said/she said is ludicrous and horrible for our public health,” she wrote.
- Other deleted posts showed Saphier publicly urging the administration to revisit repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act rather than focusing on what she described as media-driven messaging from Kennedy’s HHS.
- “Plenty of headlines and soundbites coming out of HHS lately, but few will truly move the needle on our nation’s health,” Saphier wrote in August 2025. “When President Trump returns from Alaska, it’s time to revisit repeal and replace—because lasting change comes from policy, not press releases.”
- Saphier directly disputed the kind of misinformation Kennedy and Children’s Health Defense promoted.
- “There have been no major events reported with these vaccines, which means zero people have gotten severe illness who have received the vaccine and zero people have died,” Saphier said on the Brian Kilmeade Show in November 2020. “We cannot say the same regarding COVID-19.”
Published: May 7, 2026 | Last Modified: May 20, 2026