Following up her debate performance, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann appeared on NBC Tuesday, piling on Texas governor Rick Perry for “the requirement that all innocent little 12-year-old girls or 11-year-old girls in the state of Texas would be forced by the government to take an injection of what could potentially be a very dangerous drug.”

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During Monday night’s debate, Bachmann had suggested that Perry mandated HPV vaccines in exchange for a $5,000 campaign donation from drug company Merck.

“I will tell you that I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Fla., after the debate,” the Minnesota Republican explained to NBC’s Matt Lauer Tuesday. “She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter.”

“The mother was crying when she came up to me last night. I didn’t know who she was before the debate. This is the very real concern and people have to draw their own conclusions.”

In fact, The New Zealand HPV Project found that “Gardisal has not been found to cause increased risk of any serious condition.”

Appearing on Fox News Monday night following the debate, Bachmann said that Perry was guilty of “crony capitalism,” a term popularized by Sarah Palin to attack President Barack Obama.

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“This is what people hate about politics, when you have someone in the position of power and they have political donors and use their position of power to benefit those political donors,” she told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “The governor’s former chief of staff is chief lobbyist for this big drug company and mandated, again, that every girl would have to have this particular drug.”

Watch this video from NBC’s Today Show, broadcast Sept. 12, 2011.

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