Republican senator and doctor rebukes Trump’s vaccine plan

WASHINGTON (MNTV) — Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and physician, has sharply criticized President Donald Trump’s executive order to change the childhood vaccination schedule, calling the claims behind it “crazy, stupid” and warning it could burden families and erode confidence in immunization.

Cassidy’s main objection, voiced on CNN, was the proposal to split the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine into separate shots. Instead of two visits for the combined vaccine, he said, parents could face up to six, meaning more injections for children, more missed work, and higher costs — expenses he warned could eventually raise insurance premiums. 

“The child is going to get more jabs. The parents are going to lose money and, directly and indirectly, premiums are going up,” he said. “This is going backwards. We need to go forward.”

The order is part of a wider effort by Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reconsider the timing and number of childhood vaccines. 

Trump has repeatedly linked rising vaccinations to autism diagnoses — a connection medical experts and extensive research have rejected, finding no evidence that routine vaccination causes autism. The combined MMR shot has been used since 1971 and is given in two doses, at 12–15 months and 4–6 years.

Cassidy’s rebuke carries weight coming from within Trump’s party and from a doctor, and it reframes the debate around practical consequences for families rather than political messaging. 

The underlying question, he argued, is whether changes to a decades-old system will improve children’s health or simply add barriers, and whether they rest on credible evidence.