Republican senator blasts Trump's 'crazy, stupid' remarks on MMR vaccine
US Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician who helped confirm RFK Jr as health secretary, has condemned President Trump's claims that the combined MMR vaccine is dangerous, warning that scrapping it would burden families and drive up costs.
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor who voted last year to confirm vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr as US health secretary, on Sunday sharply criticized President Donald Trump's recent claims questioning the safety of the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Trump, appearing alongside Kennedy when announcing changes to the recommended childhood vaccination schedule, called for replacing the two-dose combined MMR shot with six separate injections for three diseases, describing the combined vaccine as being like a "nuclear weapon" that could prove "quite lethal."
Cassidy, whose re-election bid recently failed after losing a Louisiana Republican primary to a Trump-backed rival, told CNN that Trump's assertion that switching to six shots would carry no downside would be laughable if it weren't so potentially tragic. He pointed out that parents would need six doctor visits instead of two, children would receive six injections instead of two, and insurers would cover six visits instead of two — ultimately pushing insurance premiums higher.
A complicated relationship with Trump
Cassidy has been on Trump's list of political adversaries since 2021, when he voted to convict the then-president over the Capitol attack. Despite this, the senator, who chairs the Senate health committee, has continued backing several of Trump's nominees, including casting the deciding vote earlier this month to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general.
When Cassidy agreed to support Kennedy's confirmation as health secretary, he said he had secured a promise that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would not remove statements from its website affirming that vaccines do not cause autism. However, since Kennedy took office, the CDC's website has been altered to add a footnote questioning that scientific consensus, along with new language suggesting studies on a possible vaccine-autism link may have been overlooked.
Cassidy said Trump's comments about the MMR vaccine would do nothing to resolve the long-discredited claim linking vaccines to autism, which originated from a single scientific paper that was later retracted.
