In an effort to walk back anti-vaccine remarks he made Monday, Sen. Rand Paul on Tuesday visited the Capitol physician’s office for a vaccine booster and tweeted out a photo.
“Ironic: Today I am getting my booster vaccine,” the Kentucky Republican tweeted. “Wonder how the liberal media will misreport this?”
On Monday, Paul sparked an intense backlash when, during an interview with CNBC, he cited “many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who would up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.”
Although Paul said in the interview that he himself supported vaccinations, his apparent link between vaccines and mental disorders drew the most attention.
Paul sought to calm the political firestorm Tuesday by receiving a booster vaccination for Hepatitis A, with a New York Times reporter in tow.
“It just annoys me that I’m being characterized as someone who’s against vaccines,” Paul told the Times.
“There’s 400 headlines now that say ‘Paul says vaccines cause mental disorders,’” he continued. “That’s not what I said. I said I’ve heard of people who’ve had vaccines and they see a temporal association and they believe that.”
