A GOP senator who has broken with his party by sparring with President Donald Trump on recent occasions is now criticizing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for not forcefully condemning misinformation about vaccines.
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy was asked about recent updates to the CDC’s “Autism and Vaccines” page on its official website, which notes that “studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
Elsewhere on the page, the organization also notes: “Scientists have not identified the root causes of autism.”
An outspoken advocate for vaccines, Cassidy told host Dana Bash that the CDC’s ambiguous declarations will give “some parents hesitancy regarding having their children vaccinated,” noting: “It’s wrong for the mom and dad trying to make the right decision.”
“It’s been firmly established vaccines do not cause autism. That’s over decades,” he explained. “The fact that [those statements are] still there is almost an insult to the American people.”
Elsewhere in his interview, he urged parents to “please vaccinate your child for measles.”
“Children have died from not having been vaccinated. Children have been in the hospital, they’ve been sick by the thousands,” he said.
Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has publicly clashed with Trump on several occasions, most recently over the Iran war.
He incurred Trump’s wrath in 2021 when he was among seven Republican senators who sided with Democrats and voted to convict the president on an impeachment charge of inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. To reach the two-thirds majority required for a conviction, however, a total of 17 GOP senators would’ve had to have voted in favor.
In May, the two-term senator lost his reelection bid after Trump recruited a challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow, and urged his supporters to defeat Cassidy.
In spite of his criticisms, Cassidy last year cast the deciding vote in favor of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for health secretary even though Kennedy was already a prominent vaccine skeptic.
Last week, he also pledged to support Trump’s nominee for CDC director, Erica Schwartz. “I’m confident that she knows what she is doing and will stand against those who do not,” he said.