GOP Senator Rips Trump Vaccine Order: ‘The President Does Not Have the Expertise’

Left: (Aaron Schwartz/Sipa USA via AP Images), Right: (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a physician, tore into President Donald Trump’s executive order overhauling federal childhood vaccine recommendations on Monday, arguing the president “does not have the expertise” to make such sweeping changes.

His rebuke came after Trump signed an order, the “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations,” pushing to spread childhood immunizations across separate medical appointments and eventually break up the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three individual shots. During the signing ceremony, Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also revived the unfounded claim of a link between vaccines and autism, arguing autism rates have risen as children have received “progressively more and more vaccines” and declaring that “vats of vaccine are currently pumped into your child’s body.”

Not to mention, Trump said Monday during the signing ceremony that the combined MMR vaccine could be “quite lethal” before conceding to a reporter minutes later that he had no evidence to support the claim.

Cassidy, a physician who attended LSU Medical School and later taught medical students and residents there, has a long history of working on public health initiatives, including helping vaccinate 36,000 children in the Baton Rouge area against Hepatitis B — notably one of the vaccines that would no longer be universally recommended for children under Trump’s executive order. His scathing X post read:

I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong. The President does not have the expertise to make these changes.

Vaccines are overwhelmingly safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines DO NOT cause autism.

Breaking up vaccines will mean children have to get more shots to get the same protection, not fewer shots. It will increase hesitancy and make children less safe.

Parents should listen to their child’s pediatrician about vaccines rather than listening to an inaccurate executive order. This is so wrong.

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