In a social media post, Trump said he would nominate Saphier, whom he called “a STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment.”
Saphier is a radiologist and director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth, according to her profile on the New York-based institution’s website. She has a doctor of medicine degree from Ross University School of Medicine in Barbados along with fellowships at the Mayo Clinic, the profile said.
The withdrawal came after tense exchanges between Means and lawmakers of both parties threw into question whether she could secure enough votes to advance out of the Senate health committee.
Her nomination had languished since her confirmation hearing in late February, even as activists from the Make America Healthy Again movement orchestrated a push to support her bid by surging phone calls to Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. They had both indicated reservations with the pick.
In nominating Means last May, Trump sought to hire a close ally of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the nation’s doctor. The 38-year-old Means, a Stanford-education physician who became disillusioned with the health care system and pivoted to a career as an author and entrepreneur, promotes ideas popular with the MAHA movement, including that Americans are overmedicalized and that diet and lifestyle changes should be at the center of efforts to end widespread chronic disease.
