As expected, President Donald Trump and U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the podium Monday afternoon to blame acetaminophen (known by the brand name Tylenol) for causing autism—an assertion that many experts reject. But both men also took some time to point the finger at one of their favorite scapegoats: vaccines.
Throughout yesterday’s news conference announcing the HHS’ apparent findings on autism, ostensibly focused on acetaminophen and folate deficiency, Trump and Kennedy repeatedly circled back to the topic of vaccination. The two tossed out familiar and regularly debunked talking points from the antivaccination movement, such as the supposed dangers of taking too many vaccines at once. These moments, off-script as they may have been, are a strong signal that RFK Jr. and his allies are still planning to officially blame vaccines for causing autism.
Veering off course
The HHS announcement on autism released yesterday, not so much a report as it is a purported fact sheet, mostly concerned the drugs acetaminophen and leucovorin, the latter being a medication used to treat certain kinds of folate deficiency. Outside scientists have already torn apart the findings, arguing they’re based, at best, on weak and mixed evidence. But that didn’t stop Trump and RFK Jr. from loudly proclaiming during the conference that they’ve come closer than anyone yet to finding the true answer to rising reported autism rates. Actual experts say most of the rise is simply due to better screening and expanded criteria for what qualifies as autism.
Trump certainly emphasized the primary findings, more than once yelling at pregnant women to not take Tylenol and to instead tough out their episodes of pain and fever since it apparently comes with no drawbacks. Leaving aside the misery of having to bear these symptoms without medication, fever during pregnancy may be a risk factor for neurodevelopmental conditions like autism. He also wrongly stated that Cuba has no autism, presumably because the country has reduced access to acetaminophen.
All that said, it didn’t take too long for Trump to start ranting about vaccines.
‘Too much liquid’
In probably the most memeable moment, Trump called for the childhood vaccine schedule to be broken up and further spaced apart, arguing it’s dangerous for babies to be exposed to too many vaccine ingredients at once—including, it seems, the water used to contain vaccine shots.
“Break it up, because it’s too much liquid, too many different things are going into that baby at too big a number, the size of this thing, when you look at it, it’s like 80 different vaccines,” Trump said.
The “too much liquid” part seems to be a unique Trumpism, but it’s certainly true that many antivaxxers fearmonger about the number of vaccines children are mandated to receive, often by highly exaggerating the figure as Trump did. Nowhere in the world is a child mandated to take 80 different vaccines, or up to 92, as RFK Jr. has previously claimed.
The tally can differ depending on the state’s policy, but kids are typically encouraged to receive around 15 different vaccines before adulthood. Many vaccines require boosters, so antivaxxers will try to fudge the math by counting every single dose as a separate vaccine. But if you even do that for all the non-annual vaccines, you still get roughly 30 doses. People, kids and adults alike, are also generally recommended to get a seasonal flu shot (and until recently, a regular covid-19 booster), but even if you included both yearly flu and covid shots until age 18, you still wouldn’t get to 80. This fuzzy math is pointless anyhow, since only some childhood vaccines are actually mandated by states for children to enter and stay in public school. New York, for instance, requires children to take ten vaccines throughout their school years.
Gaslighting mothers?
Trump offered other nonsensical canards about vaccination. He claimed that Amish communities, some of which are skeptical about vaccines, do not experience autism—a complete falsehood. He claimed the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine was dangerous—an unfounded assertion—and said the shots should be given separately. That’s a longtime goal of the antivaccination movement, but it would actually put children at risk, since fewer families have the time or resources to get all three vaccines individually. (It would also require more doses in total, which seems to fly in the face of Trump’s liquid concerns!)
Though RFK Jr. had less speaking time during the announcement, he too made it a point to bring up the debunked link between vaccines and autism. During one particularly astonishing moment, he tried to frame people’s opposition to the antivaccination movement as the “gaslighting” of mothers who believe their children’s autism was caused by vaccines, even arguing that it went against the common refrain of “believing all women”—a sentiment wholeheartedly endorsed by the White House, which highlighted it on its social media accounts.
“Some 40-70% of mothers who have children with autism believe that their child was injured by a vaccine. President Trump believes that we should be listening to these mothers instead of gaslighting and marginalizing them like prior administrations.” – @SecKennedy pic.twitter.com/491tqIpgKy
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 23, 2025
The antivax future
The HHS autism announcement released yesterday only contains a brief, but important, reference to vaccines. It noted that the National Institutes of Health has recently launched the Autism Data Science Initiative, which is intended to fund research that will further investigate the drivers of autism, among other things. The HHS announcement mentions that vaccinations will be one of the “medical and perinatal influences” that the initiative will look into, which RFK Jr. confirmed as well. HHS has also reportedly hired well-known antivaxxer David Geier to conduct a new study reexamining the link between vaccines and autism.
Some members of the antivaccination movement expressed dismay that the much-touted HHS report mostly focused on acetaminophen, fearing that RFK Jr. and Trump would let vaccines off the hook. But given their comments yesterday, it seems like they’re raring to keep undermining vaccination too. The state of the country’s public health is bad now, but it could certainly get even worse from here on out.
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