On Thursday, the White House withdrew Thursday for the nomination of President Donald Trump to Dr. David Weldon to lead the centers for disease control and prevention, multiple sources told ABC News.
The withdrawal occurred just before Weldon appeared for his confirmation audience before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (Help) Committee of the Senate, where he was expected to be looked at in his previous comments by questioning the safety of vaccines. The room was ready for the audience before the developments, which was the first Reported by axios.
Weldon was taken because he did not have the votes to be confirmed, according to Weldon and two sources familiar with his nomination. This was the first time that a candidate director of the CDC had to be confirmed by the Senate, after Congress approved a law that required it in 2022.
“Twelve hours before my scheduled confirmation audience, I received a phone call from a White House assistant informing me that my nomination to be a CDC director was being withdrawn because there were not enough votes to confirm,” Weldon wrote in a long four -page statement published Thursday afternoon.
The key support that Weldon lost, he said, was the Republican Senator Susan Collins de Maine and Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, president of the Senate’s Help Committee and a doctor who has expressed reservations that the incoming administration would sow distrust in vaccines.
Weldon said that both Collins and Cassidy called him “Anti-Vax” and mentioned his previous comments that suggest that vaccines are linked to autism, a claim discredited by numerous studies. While he was a Florida congressman, Weldon questioned the security of the MMR vaccine and fought against the use of an ingredient called Thimerosal in children’s vaccines.
“Clearly, Big Pharma did not love me in the CDC to investigate any of this,” Weldon wrote.
Weldon said Collins’ staff had become “hostile” during a recent meeting and that the senator told Kennedy at a meeting earlier this week that he was considering voting no.
But multiple sources familiar with the meeting, attended by employees for multiple Republicans in the Help Committee, refuted Weldon’s statement that Collins employees were “hostile.” Rather, the sources told ABC News, they pressed the nominated on how he planned to address accusations that he had anti -cacamic opinions.
More worrying, said a source, it was the apparent lack of preparation of Weldon for the role of the director of the CDC.
According to the source, Weldon said several times at the meeting that he did not have a vision for the role and indicated that he would develop only after he was confirmed and that he could talk to the leaders of the department.
A person familiar with the matter also refuted Weldon’s characterization that Cassidy made requests from the White House or told people how he was going to vote on the matter.
“Cassidy was not part of this decision,” said the person.
Weldon, a doctor who served in Congress from 1995 to 2009, had maintained a relatively low profile for years until Trump names him in November.
But his skepticism of science established around vaccines made him a popular election among Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s allies, the new Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Weldon says that Kennedy had told him that he was “the perfect person for work” and was “very annoying” that his nomination was withdrawn.
Former Congressman Dr. David Weldon speaks in the villages, Florida, on May 31, 2012.
Brendan Farrington/AP
Kennedy refused to comment on the withdrawal of Weldon’s nomination when ABC News contacted him by phone later on Thursday.
He also refused to share who he would like President Trump to nomine the next director of the CDC, referring to consultations with a superior assistant, Stefanie Spear, who did not respond to a message in search of comments.
Meanwhile, Weldon told ABC News in a message that late Thursday afternoon he had not yet talked to Kennedy since the news of his name was retired.
In 2007, Weldon was co -author of an “Vaccine Safety Law” with former New York Democratic Representative, Carolyn Maloney, who sought to control vaccine safety to an independent agency within the HHS.
The bill, which stagnated in a subcommittee from the House of Representatives, “would provide the necessary independence to ensure that vaccine security research is robust, impartial, free of conflict criticisms and, widely accepted by the general public,” Weldon said in a press release announcing the bill.
Weldon was being considered as director of the CDC in the midst of a measles outbreak that extends through the United States
Democratic Senator Patty Murray, former president of the Weldon committee was going to testify before, said she raised about the anti -vacuna feeling during her private meeting.
“At our meeting last month, Dr. Weldon repeat the discredited statements about vaccines: it is dangerous to put someone in the position in the CDCs that creates the lie that our rigorously proven child vaccine schedule is presenting in some way the children at toxic levels of mercury or causing autism,” Murray said in a statement.
“As we face one of the worst measles outbreaks in years thanks to President Trump, a vaccine skeptic that spent years spreading lies about safe and proven vaccines should never have been considered to lead the most important agency in charge of protecting public health,” Murray added.
