WASHINGTON — The White House has withdrawn the nomination of former Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla., whom President Donald Trump had chosen to be director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a senior administration official said.
The nomination was withdrawn just before Weldon was scheduled to testify at his confirmation hearing Thursday morning before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Axios first reported the news.
Weldon was told Wednesday night that his nomination was being withdrawn, another Trump administration official said. The White House decided to pull Weldon’s nomination when it became clear that he would not have the votes to be favorably reported out of committee because of his past controversial comments about vaccines, the official said.
The Senate committee chairman, Bill Cassidy, R-La., had been looking forward to the hearing, but Weldon did not have the votes from the committee to get the nomination onto the Senate floor, a source on Capitol Hill close to Cassidy said.
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In a lengthy statement, Weldon said he assumed the White House withdrew his nomination because Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, had reservations and because Cassidy planned to vote against him. He added that Cassidy had asked for his nomination to be withdrawn over concerns that he could be “antivax.”
There are 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the committee, Weldon noted, so losing even one of the Republican senators would have been a problem.
“So, he was a big problem, and losing Collins, too, was clearly too much for the White House,” Weldon said, referring to Cassidy. “The president is a busy man doing good work for our nation, and the last thing he needs is a controversy about CDC.”
A spokesperson for Cassidy denied that Cassidy asked the administration to withdraw Weldon's nomination and that Cassidy was expected to vote against him.
Cassidy said later in a statement: "I was looking forward to the hearing. I was surprised when Dr. Weldon’s nomination was withdrawn.
"His poor response to this situation shows that the pressures of being CDC director would have been too much,” he said.
Weldon also claimed the pharmaceutical industry lobbied against his nomination, and he defended the work of Andrew Wakefield, the British physician who published a study that falsely claimed the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella causes autism.
Cassidy, a doctor, had raised concerns about the anti-vaccine advocacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before Kennedy was confirmed as health and human services secretary last month. Weldon has held some vaccine views similar to Kennedy's.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., met with Weldon last month and signaled she would oppose his nomination, saying she had little confidence he would stand up to Kennedy. She said Weldon "spent years promoting the false conspiracy that vaccines cause autism, but he has also criticized the CDC’s essential role in vaccine safety research."
After his nomination was withdrawn, Murray called Weldon "a vaccine skeptic who spent years spreading lies about safe and proven vaccines" and "should never have even been under consideration to lead the foremost agency charged with protecting public health."
"While I have little to no confidence in the Trump administration to do so, they should immediately nominate someone for this position who at bare minimum believes in basic science and will help lead CDC’s important work to monitor and prevent deadly outbreaks," she said.
Weldon served 14 years in the House until 2009, during which he criticized the CDC and questioned the safety of vaccines. Similar to Kennedy, Weldon has made statements linking vaccines to autism even though research shows there is no connection, and he has called on the CDC to further research it.
As a congressman, he questioned the safety of the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella, and he also promoted disproven claims that a mercury-containing preservative, thimerosal, used in children's vaccines caused autism, even sponsoring a bill called the Mercury-Free Vaccines Act.
In 2007, he unveiled legislation that would have transferred oversight of vaccine safety from the CDC to an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.
Weldon also reportedly helped anti-vaccine researchers Mark Geier and his son, David, access the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a CDC database containing patient health records, according to an account in the 2004 book “Evidence of Harm” by journalist David Kirby.
The CDC has decided to begin researching autism and potential links to vaccines, said a source familiar with the agency's planning.
