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President-elect Trump said he thinks there are “problems” with vaccines and again made a false connection between vaccines and autism rates on Monday.
“There are problems. We don’t do it as well as a lot of other nations, and those nations don’t use anything,” Trump said during a wide-ranging news conference at Mar-a-Lago.
During the press conference, Trump again hinted that vaccines are increasing autism rates and that his administration would investigate. It’s a position that Trump has flirted with for years, but has recently come to the fore as the president-elect has allied himself with vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“If you look at autism, 30 years ago we had it, I heard numbers like 1 in 200,000, 1 in 100,000. Now I’m hearing numbers like 1 in 100. So something’s wrong. Is there thing. And we will. find out,” Trump said.
Autism diagnoses have been on the rise, but experts have attributed the increase to better awareness of symptoms in children and changing criteria for diagnosing ASD in children.
About 1 in 36 children now have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates, compared to about 1 in 150 in 2000.
Trump also signaled his opposition to vaccine mandates, which have long been part of the country’s public health policy.
“I don’t like mandates; I’m not a big mandate person,” Trump said when asked if schools should mandate vaccines.
Trump’s opposition to school mandates was a common theme on the campaign trail, though his aides said he was referring only to the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
In separate comments, Trump also defended Kennedy, his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy will meet with GOP senators this week on Capitol Hill as he looks to bolster support for his nomination.
“I think he’s going to be a lot less radical than you think. I think he’s very open-minded. Or I wouldn’t have put him there,” Trump said
Senators are likely to question Kennedy about his policy positions, many of which run counter to traditional GOP orthodoxy. He has a long history of questioning vaccines and has also promoted the disproven idea that vaccines cause autism.
But Trump also said he was a “big believer” in the polio vaccine and promised that “you’re not going to lose it,” noting that he “saw what happened with polio” and has “friends really affected by it.” . .”
