In a Truth Social post announcing his next surgeon general nominee, President Donald Trump praised Dr. Nicole Saphier as “an INCREDIBLE communicator” who breaks down complex health issues for Americans.
Saphier, a radiologist and director of breast imaging at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth cancer center in New Jersey, has built her own social media following over the years.
She’s been a contributing opinion writer and guest on Fox News shows since 2018. She has authored three books, including 2020’s “Make America Healthy Again,” a title that later became the Trump administration’s health policy slogan. She has more than 150,000 Instagram followers and gained more than 350,000 X followers before recently making that account private.
In May 2025, Saphier launched “Wellness Unmasked,” a twice weekly podcast in which she discusses health and wellness topics and news. She also sells herbal tinctures that she promotes for calm and focus through her company DropRx.
A screenshot shows Dr. Nicole Saphier’s podcast May 7, 2026.
Given Saphier’s influence and potential role as the “nation’s doctor,” a term used to describe the surgeon general, we listened to her podcast to learn more about her views. Although she has criticized the administration, Saphier is generally supportive of Trump and her positions often dovetail with MAHA movement leaders on topics such as minimal COVID-19 mitigation measures. She champions the role of data and research in policy and medical decision-making.
Saphier’s selection comes after Trump’s previous nomination of Dr. Casey Means stalled in a Senate committee. Senators questioned Means’ qualifications and positions on vaccines. Before Means, Trump nominated and then withdrew Fox News contributor Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, who faced questions about her education and credentials before her confirmation hearing.
Despite her affiliation with MAHA, Saphier’s nomination prompted pushback from some of the movement’s activists.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., however, described Saphier as “a long-time warrior for the MAHA movement.” She is friends with Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, with whom she co-authored a November 2021 Wall Street Journal opinion article about the COVID-19 vaccine for young children, saying the risk of complications from COVID-19 infection or the vaccine was “extremely low either way.”
Here are a few things we heard on Saphier’s podcast.
1) She’s been critical of the administration but also embraced being ‘anti-establishment.’
Saphier stops short of issuing blanket praise for the Trump administration.
“I don’t agree with 100% of what’s going on at the HHS, specifically at the CDC right now,” she said in an April 7 episode, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On X, in posts she later deleted, Saphier’s criticisms were sharper, CNN reported.
After U.S. health officials asked the Pan American Health Organization’s expert panel to delay a meeting about the country’s measles status as measles cases climbed, Saphier posted: “Seems like they may not want to admit the U.S. Measles elimination status is is gone until after midterm elections.”
She repeatedly criticized Trump’s rhetoric around Tylenol being unsafe during pregnancy and for children.
On her Sept. 23 podcast, Saphier said watching Trump’s Tylenol press conference the day prior was “really painful.”
“The problem I had was it was full of hyperbole and not only do facts matter, but the messaging matters too,” Saphier said. “Even though what was said at the press conference yesterday was that they have found a study pointing to causation, that’s just not true.”
At the same time, Saphier sometimes invokes skepticism toward longstanding traditional health care institutions. During the pandemic, for example, she opposed mask mandates and certain COVID-19 vaccine requirements.
She has also agreed with some of the Trump administration’s changing guidance on vaccines, including the decision to scrap a decadeslong policy recommending all newborns get a dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. Saphier describes herself as someone who favors “risk-based recommendations” over “one-size fits all” policies.
Speaking about dietary guidelines during her April 2 episode, Saphier said she doesn’t object to being “anti-establishment” because science is “never settled.”
“People sometimes get mad at me because they feel like I’m not a loyalist, whether one way or the other,” Saphier said during a Sept. 23 episode. She said she sees her role as to “tell you what I’m thinking and kind of make some sense of all this mess.”
2) She talks about prioritizing evidence-based policy over ideology
In September, Saphier criticized a CDC vaccine committee for entertaining comments from people who are not medical professionals and who don’t understand vaccine data.
“It definitely felt like a lot of ideology was being presented, a lot of flawed data that in the real world of academia we would never even consider because a lot of it was not legitimate,” she said, giving no specifics about whose comments she was targeting.
After U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth removed the flu vaccine mandate for service members, Saphier called for gathering data on the policy’s impact on defense readiness during the next flu season.
“That’s what we should be watching, because good health policy shouldn’t be driven by ideology or people trying to get political talking points,” Saphier said in April. “It should be driven by evidence.”
3) She champions long-term safety research, studies and data.
Saphier consistently advocates for data to assess health treatments.
Saphier has questioned whether people should commit to a lifetime of taking GLP-1 drugs for weight loss in the absence of long-term safety data. When talking about peptides, Saphier repeatedly lamented the lack of safety studies and research showing the benefits and risks of these injectable amino acid chains over long periods.
“You can talk about them all you want, but unless you have data showing a benefit or a lack of benefit, you know, it’s really hard for me to get behind something,” Saphier said.
In December, she said that an FDA communication purporting to link COVID-19 vaccines to children’s deaths was “opinion” because the administration provided no data backing the claims. She said she believed the Biden administration and pharmaceutical companies downplayed safety signals with the COVID-19 vaccines and children, but she said that concern about missing data cuts both ways.
“You can’t make a statement without having data because if you just manipulate words to promulgate fear and incite anger and other emotions without having the data, you know, you’re no better off,” Saphier said.
Similarly, she expressed frustration that “no new data was presented” during Trump’s Sept. 22, 2025, Tylenol and pregnancy press conference. Officials had promoted a newly published metaanalysis that looked at a collection of studies on acetaminophen and autism which have identified correlation between the drug and autism.
“No one has been able to prove causative links between acetaminophen and autism spectrum disorder,” Saphier said of the available research. She described the research as “unfinished” and called for scientists to “put more time and effort there.”
In some areas, however, she showed willingness to draw conclusions ahead of definitive data: On certain gender-affirming medical treatments for minors, she both acknowledged the science is unsettled and said that her own “settled opinion is children who are dealing with gender dysphoria are suffering from a mental illness” and should not be given medications or surgery.
Despite the continued discussion of data and research, Saphier’s podcast does not regularly cite specific sources or provide “show notes” with citations where listeners could learn more.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
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