President Donald Trump made a series of bizarre claims and dolled out his own medical advice while making a major announcement at the White House flanked by his top health officials.
The president, 79, was slated to give remarks on Monday afternoon that the administration had found links between autism and Tylenol use by pregnant women, an announcement that some doctors were already pushing back on.
However, Trump went off-script and made a series of rambling, eyebrow-raising comments about autism, vaccines, and butchered the pronunciation of acetaminophen, best known as the brand name Tylenol.
“I think I can say that there are certain groups of people that don’t take any vaccines or don’t take any pills that have no autism,” Trump declared confidently.
But just moments later, he looked around at the group with him to see if what he had just claimed was actually true.
“Is that a correct statement by the way?” he asked.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy chimed in with the Amish as an example, despite there being cases of autism in the Amish community.
“The Amish, yeah, virtually, I hear no, I heard none,” Trump responded. “See, Bobby wants to be very careful with what he says, and he should, but I am not so careful with what I say,” the president rambled. “You have certain groups, the Amish, as an example, they have essentially no autism.”
But the president, appearing to pluck random claims and sharing them in his major announcement from the White House did not stop there.
“I mean, there’s a rumor and I don’t know if it’s still or not that Cuba, they don’t have Tylenol because they don’t have the money for Tylenol, and they have virtually no autism, okay?” the president declared.
The president suggested it was one of multiple places around the world that did not have Tylenol and, therefore, almost no autism.
Trump said there was no downside to not taking Tylenol. He called it “not good” and suggested pregnant women should “tough it out” despite Tylenol being the most commonly recommended pain reliever for pregnant women for decades.
“With Tylenol, don’t take it. Don’t take it,” Trump insisted. “And if you can’t live and your fever is so bad, you have to take one because there’s no alternative to that, sadly.”
“What can you take instead? It’s actually there’s not an alternative to that,” Trump continued. “And as you know, other of the medicines are absolutely proven bad.”
After his announcement, the president called on Kennedy to speak, commenting, “I hope I didn’t ruin his day,” in an apparent acknowledgment that he went way off script.
The announcement was reminiscent of when Trump dolled out outlandish COVID advice from the podium during his first term at the height of the pandemic.
While extended acetaminophen use during pregnancy has been found in several observational studies to be associated with higher rates of neurodevelopment disorders, experts have emphasized that those studies don’t definitively prove frequent Tylenol use causes autism, according to the Yale School of Public Health.
The president did not present new evidence to back up his announcement on Monday.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology released a statement in response to the Trump administration on Monday.
“Suggestions that acetaminophen use in pregnancy causes autism are not only highly concerning to clinicians but also irresponsible when considering the harmful and confusing message they send to pregnant patients, including those who may need to rely on this beneficial medicine during pregnancy,” it said.
It went on to say that the administration’s announcement is “not backed by the full body of scientific evidence and dangerously simplifies the many and complex causes of neurologic challenges in children.”
It also warned that acetaminophen is one of the few options available to treat pain and fever in pregnant women, which can be harmful if left untreated.
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