The 42-year-old Florida lawmaker wrote on X on Friday that “the lies were a weapon to try to destroy me.”
Robert Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to head the US Department of Health and Human Services, meanwhile, is facing backlash for his vaccine skepticism.
Shares of vaccine makers and medical companies around the world fell sharply on Friday as investors reacted to the nomination of a company candidate who promised to crack down on “Big Pharma.”
The head of the American Public Health Association, which has 25,000 member health professionals, told the BBC that Kennedy’s criticism of immunization “has already done a lot of damage to public health in the country”.
George S. Benjamin added that Kennedy was “simply the wrong man for it.”
Trump himself has not yet directly criticized his choices.
The president-elect is still hiring staff for his incoming administration, with positions such as FBI director and Treasury secretary yet to be named.
