An irate Donald Trump told Robert F. Kennedy Jr. he would be considered a failure if he could not prove a long-debunked link between vaccines and autism, according to a report.
During an Oval Office meeting in June, the president chastised the health and human services secretary for not doing enough to prove an alleged connection between childhood vaccines and autism, and felt he should have accomplished more over the past year and a half leading the Department of Health and Human Services, sources told The Wall Street Journal.
Trump had also pointedly asked Kennedy why he wasn’t doing more to investigate the alleged connection between vaccines and autism during a lunch at the president’s golf course in Virginia in May. Trump accused the health secretary of getting the “yips” for not investigating the issue more aggressively.
Kennedy was said to be taken aback by the pressure from Trump. The White House had previously urged the health secretary to tone down his public distrust of vaccines, fearing it could hurt Republicans in November’s midterm elections.
Trump, 80, is not a vaccine skeptic on the same level as the 72-year-old Kennedy. During his first term in office he advised people to get the COVID-19 vaccine and publicly revealed that he received a booster shot.
The president has also frequently complained that he does not get enough credit for the rollout of Operation Warp Speed, the first Trump administration’s effort to rapidly accelerate vaccine development in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, Trump has long been skeptical about vaccinating children, including questioning whether there is a link between vaccines and autism—a claim that has no scientific basis.
The Journal reported that Trump is so obsessed with the issue that he “steers nearly every conversation” he has with Kennedy back to investigating the claim.
In May, Trump signed an executive order to drastically reduce the number of vaccines administered to American children. The order backed an HHS report recommending reducing the number of routine childhood vaccinations from 17 to 11.
Trump has also considered changing the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine by splitting it into three separate shots. This is despite there being no scientific justification for doing so and multiple studies showing there is no connection between the MMR vaccine and autism.
In a statement to the Journal, White House spokesman Kush Desai said concerns from parents about “America’s skyrocketing autism rates have long been ignored if not mocked,” and that Trump is now changing this.
“The Trump administration is committed to leaving no stone unturned to finally address these concerns with Gold Standard Science,” Desai said.
HHS spokeswoman Emily Hilliard added: “Secretary Kennedy and President Trump are aligned in their commitment to confronting the chronic disease epidemic affecting America’s children through rigorous, gold-standard science.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services for further comment.
