Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday issued an unrelenting defense of President Trump’s surgeon general nominee, Casey Means, who has faced an onslaught of criticism since the president tapped her for the influential government post late Wednesday.
In a post on the social platform X on Thursday, Kennedy chastised her critics — which have included some high-profile conservative influencers including Laura Loomer, who called the pick “honestly insane” and suggested Trump did not make the decision 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 post on X.
Kennedy touted Means’s credentials, noting she was the president of her undergraduate class at Stanford University, a “standout” at Stanford Medical School and “a top performer” in surgical residency, which “she had the courage to leave” because 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 special government employee at HHS and a close ally of Kennedy’s. They are both high-profile proponents of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda and co-wrote a book that, Kennedy said in his post, “helped launch the MAHA movement.”
Kennedy said Casey Means’s approach to health and wellness has inspired Americans “to rethink our healthcare system,” which, according to Kennedy, poses “an existential threat to the status quo interests, which profit from sickness.”
Kennedy was adamant that he would continue to defend Means against 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 said. “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 right in recent years through appearances on Tucker Carlson’s and Joe Rogan’s podcasts and built a large following online through writing about health and wellness. She and Kennedy share the view that unhealthy lifestyle choices and environmental toxins are to blame for obesity, cancer and other health crises facing the U.S.
Like many of Kennedy’s allies, she has also been skeptical of vaccines, questioning their “cumulative effects” on Americans.
She co-founded a health app that can connect to glucose monitors, and she promotes various health supplements through her online presence.
