Less than an hour before his confirmation hearing was to begin, the White House abruptly pulled the nomination of Dave Weldon to be director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An unnamed source told Fox News,  "It became clear that the votes weren't there in the Senate for him to get confirmed. This would have been a futile effort."

Weldon, a medical doctor, Army veteran, and former seven-term member of Congress from Florida, was something of an outlier to be CDC director, see BREAKING: Now We Know Who Pres. Trump Wants As the Director of CDC – RedState. He was a vocal critic of federal vaccine policy during his time in Congress.

Reminder - In the movie "Vaxxed," Dave Weldon, Trump's CDC pick, criticizes the integrity of vaccine safety research, highlighting a revolving door among government, industry, and academia. He accuses the CDC of possibly concealing information regarding a link between the MMR… pic.twitter.com/x0isIdPwfT

— Camus (@newstart_2024) January 4, 2025

He was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s personal pick to lead the CDC. 

In the past few days, Weldon has come under intense attack as an anti-vaxxer. The medical outlet STAT covered Weldon's nomination this way: CDC nominee Dave Weldon has long supported anti-vaccine theories.

But an examination by STAT of thousands of pages of documents from Weldon’s 14 years in Congress, part of his archives housed here at the Florida Institute of Technology, and interviews with a half-dozen former health officials, found that his support for anti-vaccine theories runs long and deep. His advocacy of these views goes back decades, even longer than those of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services.

That steadfast history may explain why Trump selected him to run an agency in which he would oversee vaccine policy and messaging. His name rose to the top of the administration’s short list for CDC directors after a push from Kennedy’s team, three people familiar with the process told STAT.

Given the highly controversial nominations President Trump has managed to force through the Senate (for instance, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Kash Patel), one has to wonder why a practicing physician and former member of Congress was a "bridge too far" to lead the CDC.

The final nail for Weldon is thought to be a story that Weldon's CDC would reopen the scientific investigation into a link between the proliferation of childhood vaccines and what looks like an autism epidemic: Exclusive: US CDC plans study into vaccines and autism, sources say | Reuters. That project and the media reports tarring him as "anti-vax" have the hallmarks of a concerted campaign to sandbag Weldon's nomination. Whatever the reason, the White House determined that Weldon would lose at least four GOP senators in the floor vote.

Apropos of nothing, shares of vaccine-maker Moderna were up 5.4% as the market opened Thursday.

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