Not even the top Republican in the Senate would recommend turning to the Trump administration’s Health Secretary for medical advice.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune encouraged women to take Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s words with a grain of salt after the Health Secretary and President Donald Trump made bizarre claims linking pregnant women’s Tylenol use to autism.
“I think that if I were a woman, I’d be talking to my doctor and not taking, you know, advice from RFK or any other government bureaucrat for that matter,” he told MSNBC’s Ali Vitali on Wednesday.
The Health Department did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
Thune made the remark after Vitali asked him if the Republican Party had become “a party of no dissent.”
“No, and I don’t think that’s true,” he responded, pointing to previous statements he had made breaking with the administration on the Tylenol debacle and the Federal Communications Commission’s threats to go after ABC over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
“I just think that there are subjects and issues on which we have differences of opinion. I typically litigate those privately rather than publicly,” he said.
Thune first voiced concern about Kennedy’s claim last month, when the Health Secretary joined Trump in the Oval Office for a press conference centered around warning pregnant women against using a popular painkiller.
Kennedy and Trump claimed that acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, was partly to blame for autism. But experts quickly pointed out that Tylenol is safe for pregnant women and evidence linking acetaminophen to autism is weak.
“I’m obviously very concerned about that,” Thune later told CNN. “I think that science ought to guide these discussions, these conversations, and our decision making around our health… my view is we would be very guarded in making broad assertions and make sure that they are well grounded in science and medicine.”
Thune voted to confirm Kennedy’s nomination as Health Secretary in February, and Democratic troller-in-chief Gavin Newsom made sure to remind him of that.
“Imagine voting to confirm a guy and then telling half the country not to take his quack medical advice,” the California governor said in a post on X.
Imagine voting to confirm a guy and then telling half the country not to take his quack medical advice. https://t.co/uFVfOZeBU2
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) October 16, 2025
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