Well being and Human Providers (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday issued an unrelenting protection of President Trump’s surgeon basic nominee, Casey Means, who has confronted an onslaught of criticism because the president tapped her for the influential authorities submit late Wednesday.
In a submit on the social platform X on Thursday, Kennedy chastised her critics — which have included some high-profile conservative influencers together with Laura Loomer, who referred to as the choose “honestly insane” and steered Trump didn’t make the choice himself.
“The absurd attacks on Casey Means reveal just how far off course our healthcare conversations have veered, and how badly entrenched interests–including Big Food and its industry-funded social media gurus–are terrified of change,” Kennedy wrote in his submit on X.
Kennedy touted Means’s credentials, noting she was the president of her undergraduate class at Stanford College, a “standout” at Stanford Medical Faculty and “a top performer” in surgical residency, which “she had the courage to leave” as a result of she “realized her patients weren’t getting better.”
“Casey is the perfect choice for Surgeon General precisely because she left the traditional medical system–not in spite of it. Her leadership has inspired many doctors to reform the system and forge a new path away from sick care, which fills corporate coffers, and toward health care, which enriches all of us,” Kennedy wrote.
Casey Means is the sister of Calley Means, a particular authorities worker at HHS and an in depth ally of Kennedy’s. They’re each high-profile proponents of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda and co-wrote a e-book that, Kennedy mentioned in his submit, “helped launch the MAHA movement.”
Kennedy mentioned Casey Means’s method to well being and wellness has impressed People “to rethink our healthcare system,” which, in line with Kennedy, poses “an existential threat to the status quo interests, which profit from sickness.”
Kennedy was adamant that he would proceed to defend Means in opposition to critics, saying, “She will be the best Surgeon General in American history.”
“The goal of MAHA is to reform the largest and most powerful industry in the United States,” Kennedy mentioned. “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. But it will not work.”
Means rose to prominence on the appropriate lately by way of appearances on Tucker Carlson’s and Joe Rogan’s podcasts and constructed a big following on-line by way of writing about well being and wellness. She and Kennedy share the view that unhealthy life-style decisions and environmental toxins are accountable for weight problems, most cancers and different well being crises dealing with the U.S.
Like a lot of Kennedy’s allies, she has additionally been skeptical of vaccines, questioning their “cumulative effects” on People.
She co-founded a well being app that may hook up with glucose screens, and he or she promotes numerous well being dietary supplements by way of her on-line presence.