Tennessee congressman-elect Mark Green has a history of using anti-science, anti-Muslim, and anti-gay rhetoric. So naturally, the GOP freshman class elected him to be their leader.

Green, who won the House seat vacated by Marsha Blackburn when she ran for Senate, was elected unanimously by 30 freshman Republicans to be their class president.

His ignorant and bigoted views make him the perfect poster-child for Republicans in the Trump era.

Green, a medical doctor, recently embraced the debunked fringe theory that vaccines may cause autism. At a meeting with constituents after he was elected to the House, Green claimed that "there is some concern that the rise in autism is the result of the preservatives that are in our vaccines." [...]

Pediatricians "expressed dismay" at his comments, according to NBC News.

"[A]ny physician who espouses overt anti-vaccine views is contributing to our national decline in child public health, and could be considered in violation" of their Hippocratic oath, Dr. Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and dean of the school of tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told NBC News.

Government agencies like the CDC have been working to dispel harmful myths like the ones Green is perpetuating.

And even though Green peddled these myths, his spokesperson told NBC that Green's own children are vaccinated.