Surgeon General Fiasco Is A Perfect Trump Story
It's the perfect Trump story, one that tells you everything. It begins, as so many of them do, with a candidate whose qualification for high office is appearing on Fox News, proving once again that talking about something on television — and looking good — is not the same thing as actual experience.
In this case, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a New York family medicine doctor who reportedly practices at an urgent care facility, talked about medical issues as a Fox News contributor, which obviously qualified her to be the nation's leading doctor and health care expert as surgeon general. Put aside the fact that it took her six years to get through a four-year foreign medical school in the Caribbean (what you do if you don't get into an American medical school); in her autobiography, she writes,
"I studied at the University of South Florida where I enrolled in an Army ROTC program. I did basic training in Fort Lewis, Washington, and completed my medical training at the University of Arkansas where I served as chief resident."
She leaves out the part about the University of the Caribbean, as well as the fact that while she participated in ROTC, she was "medically disenrolled" in the program before being commissioned as an officer. And while she holds herself out as the director of the urgent care facility, CityMed, where she works, CBS News could not confirm that; CityMed would say only that she was a doctor there.
All of this was known about Nesheiwat, the sister-in-law of short-lived National Security Adviser and now U.N. Ambassador-to-be Mike Waltz, and none of it was getting in the way of her confirmation hearings, scheduled for Thursday. And then Sunday night, right-wing activist, conspiracy theorist and self-proclaimed Trump-loving "white nationalist" Laura Loomer took up the cause, demanding a new nominee. She unleashed on social media. While noting that Dr. Nesheiwat was a "nepo" (the sister-in-law point), is currently involved in a medical malpractice case, and didn't go to medical school in the U.S., it was her statements about vaccines that earned Loomer's wrath. Loomer posted:
"@DoctorJanette said 'Vaccine hesitancy is a Global health threat.'
"She used her access to Fox News to promote the dangerous Covid vaccine, which is now killing millions of people. She tried to shame people who didn't take the vaccine by calling them global health threats.
"Vaccines are a matter of PERSONAL HEALTH FREEDOM. "Vaccine hesitancy" is a matter of PERSONAL FREEDOM AND LIBERTY!
"It is not a Global Health Threat.
"MY BODY MY CHOICE!
"By her own logic, President Donald Trump and @RobertKennedyJr are GLOBAL HEALTH THREATS because they are challenging the safety of childhood vaccines.
"@DoctorJanette is not ideologically aligned with Donald Trump or his admin's health initiatives. The DOD is now giving back pay to armed service members who were let go because they didn't take the COVID JAB. They are now rightfully receiving back pay reparations for wrongful termination over their refusal to take an experimental DNA modifier. According to @DoctorJanette, these service members are GLOBAL HEALTH THREATS.
"How can she be confirmed in front of the US Senate on Thursday?"
She can't. On Wednesday afternoon, less than 24 hours before her scheduled confirmation hearing, President Donald Trump pulled the nomination. The last time Loomer came to town looking for scalps, supposedly with dossiers of who was and was not loyal on the National Security team, half the staff got purged.
This is who Trump is listening to.
Her position on vaccines was the one good thing about this nominee for surgeon general. It cost her the job.
Terrible things are going to happen. Measles is coming back. Children will die. When the history of this era is written, it will be a public health disaster, a shining example of the rejection of science in favor of know-nothingness, of pigheaded denials. This is how it happens.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
