Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, made a series of absurd statements during a cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump on Thursday, including a claim that he would reveal the “cause” of autism by September, teasing the reveal like a new product launch for the fall. And Trump seemed very impressed.
Kennedy, who’s worked his entire life advocating against life-saving vaccines, praised Trump for his dedication to the so-called Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, and insisted that the team of scientists he’s assembled from around the world would figure out what was causing an autism “epidemic.”
“At your direction, we are going to know by September,” Kennedy said to the president. “We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world. By September we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”
Kennedy said the autism rate was 1 in 31 children while it used to be 1 in 31,000, numbers that Trump marveled at in the cabinet meeting. News broke last month that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched a “study” to determine if vaccination is the cause (it is not).
“So it was one in 10,000 children had autism, and now it’s one in 31, not 31,000, 31,” Trump said. “That is a horrible statistic, isn’t it? And there’s got to be something artificial out there that’s doing this.”
It’s not clear what Trump meant by “artificial,” which could conceivably refer to anything from artificial dyes in food to something he believes is present in the MMR vaccine. Trump has entertained the idea that childhood vaccinations are behind higher autism rates, though that conspiracy theory has been debunked repeatedly. There is no single “cause” for autism and the idea that you can put a deadline like September on such a complex question is completely ridiculous.
Trump, who’s long known how to create hype for media events, went on to say during the cabinet meeting that there would be “no bigger news conference,” when Kennedy reveals the cause of autism by September.
“If you can come up with that answer, where you stop taking something, you stop eating something or maybe it’s a shot, but something’s causing it,” Trump said.
Kennedy later went on Fox News and was asked about the fact that studies have shown vaccines don’t cause autism. The secretary falsely claimed that those studies were “narrow” and suggested he was going to uncover some greater truth about some connection there.
Yeah, RFK Jr. is going to make it so the government says vaccines cause autism as he dismisses studies showing no link.
“The studies that they did were very very narrow… 14 of those studies are invalid. The biggest weakness of those studies is they never studied vaccinated versus unvaccinated.”
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) April 10, 2025 at 1:06 PM
During the cabinet meeting, Kennedy talked about other programs the Trump regime was working on, including removing “soda pops,” from being allowed to be purchased through the SNAP benefits program, commonly known as food stamps. The U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees SNAP, but Kennedy has previously said he’s talking to Brooke Rollins at that agency about the move. The Health Secretary also insisted his agencies were responding well to the historic measles outbreak in Texas which has seen the death of three Americans so far. Kennedy has sent mixed messages about whether the measles vaccine, which is enormously effective, is something Americans should get.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA and CDC, has seen billions in cuts since Kennedy took control of the agency, but the secretary recently revealed he doesn’t really understand what’s being cut. But that shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Kennedy does not have the qualifications to be running such an enormous bureaucracy.
In fact, most of Trump’s cabinet are not qualified for their jobs, from the Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins with no experience in Agriculture to the Education Secretary Linda McMahon with no experience in education. And let’s not forget the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, billionaire Elon Musk, who’s unilaterally and unlawfully destroying government programs he doesn’t understand. These people were all hired to destroy the federal government and they’re going to keep doing that until someone puts a stop to it.
Unfortunately, there’s no cavalry to save America right now, especially as the Democrats continue to vote to confirm Trump’s picks. Even Wall Street doesn’t seem to have much sway with Trump these days. The president made a big media splash on Wednesday by announcing he was pausing some of the big tariffs he had threatened against many countries around the world, sending stocks soaring in a historic rally. But stocks were down again Thursday after people revealed Trump was still serious about maintaining a 10% tariff across the board and over 100% tariffs on China.
