As the summer neared its end, Donald Trump did his best to hype a scheduled White House event on autism. The president assured the public that he was poised to deliver an announcement that was “very, very big.” A day later, he added that the information he was ready to share was “so big.”
As is too often the case, Trump’s results couldn’t match his rhetoric. When the event happened, Americans saw a president spend an hour peddling outlandish claims about Tylenol. Making matters worse, the Republican conceded his conclusions were rooted in his “feelings” — as opposed to those who base their findings on, you know, “studies.”
Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine researcher at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told The Washington Post, “That was the most dangerously irresponsible press conference in the realm of public health in American history.”
A month later, Reuters reported on more recent comments from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.:
Donald Trump’s top health official on Wednesday said evidence does not show that Kenvue’s pain medicine Tylenol definitively causes autism but that it should still be used cautiously, a month after the president said U.S. health officials would recommend limiting its use. ‘The causative association … between Tylenol given in pregnancy and the perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely cause autism. But it is very suggestive,’ Kennedy told reporters, citing animal, blood and observational studies.
It’s hard not to wonder whether Trump took note of the comments.
Indeed, the president has been quite animated about acetaminophen lately. In the aftermath of his ridiculous White House event in mid-September, Trump continued to push hysterical rhetoric about Tylenol, online and on camera, claiming that he’s “studied this a long time.” (He has no background in science or medicine and has a track record of promoting unscientific nonsense.)
In the following weeks, the president kept going, even interrupting his Asia trip this week to publish an anti-Tylenol screed to his social media platform. “Pregnant Women, DON’T USE TYLENOL UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, DON’T GIVE TYLENOL TO YOUR YOUNG CHILD FOR VIRTUALLY ANY REASON,” he wrote for reasons unknown.
Around the same time, Ken Paxton, Texas’ scandal-plagued attorney general, followed the White House’s cues and sued the current and former makers of Tylenol, echoing debunked Trump claims related to autism.
One day after the Texas Republican’s case was filed, Kennedy (who was cited repeatedly in Paxton’s court filing) conceded that there’s “not sufficient” evidence to prove a connection between Tylenol and vaccines. Whether he realizes this or not, the Cabinet secretary has created overlapping messes. On the one hand, Kennedy made a public concession that cut off his allies at the knees. On the other, the longtime conspiracy theorist nevertheless claimed there’s a “suggestive” link between the painkiller and autism, which isn’t supported by the science. The result is a dynamic in which the American mainstream will continue to struggle when it comes to trusting federal public health officials. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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