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Swalwell Blames Trump for Measles Outbreak, Fox News Doctor Says Surge “Expected” Due To “Declining Vaccination Rates”

by in Daily Edition | December 16, 2025 3 min read

RFK Jr.

RFK Jr., Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Responding to reports of a “second U.S. measles surge this year” and a dramatic graphic showing a 14,608% increase in measles cases in the U.S. since 2020 (when the country had just 13 cases total), Dr. Nicole Saphier — a radiologist and frequent medical news contributor — told Fox News that there is “lots of evidence of community spread, not just on the East Coast but throughout the country.”

Saphier said: “To be honest this is somewhat expected as we see declining vaccination rates.” For the first time since 2000, “the United States is in jeopardy of losing the elimination status of measles.” Saphier reports that “we have seen our MMR vaccine rates go from 95 to 92 percent over the past five or six years.”

Saphier blamed the Biden administration CDC for contributing to a vaccine hesitancy, a claim she made during the pandemic and reasserted this week. Saphier reiterated her claim that the Biden-era CDC was the “biggest single risk factor for vaccine hesitancy in the United States” — despite a continuing uptick in vaccine hesitancy under the HHS leadership of Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), an unwavering Trump antagonist who is running for governor in California, shared the video and took a swipe at the Trump administration, saying it “brought back measles!”

Swalwell’s comment was met with derision on X, where commenters blamed illegal migration and the Biden border policy for the measles situation, even as Saphier pointed to vaccine hesitancy.

Another commenter taking aim at Swalwell pointed out that the MMR vaccine is not an “annual shot” and therefore the vaccines needed to combat the present outbreak among children would have been given long before Trump took office in 2025 — during other administrations and some, of course, during Trump’s first presidency.

(NOTE: The childhood schedule for routine MMR vaccination recommendation is two doses, the first between 12-15 months old, and the second between 4-6 years old.)

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster encouraged vaccinations in vague terms — “if there’s some way to prevent it, you ought to do it” — while acknowledging the distrust that has been built up by anti-vaxxers. “There’s some people who don’t want to do it, and that’s up to them…People need to understand it’s dangerous just like a lot of other diseases.”

Former Surgeon General Jerome Adams also commented on Dr. Saphier’s appearance, comparing the current quarantines in SC to the pandemic restrictions and noting the different reactions.