Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has claimed that children who are circumcised have double the rate of autism, most likely because they are taking Tylenol.
In a wild rant during a Trump cabinet meeting on Thursday, the controversial Health Secretary also suggested some pregnant women were taking the pain relief drug just to spite the president, and accused them of having pathological levels of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
“This morning before I came in here, somebody showed me a TikTok video of a pregnant woman. She is an associate professor at Columbia Medical School, and she is saying “F Trump” and gobbling Tylenol with her baby in her placenta,” Kennedy said, confusing the temporary organ with a uterus.
“The level of Trump Derangement Syndrome has now left political landscapes and it is now in the realm of pathology.”
The comments came three weeks after Trump and Kennedy held a controversial press conference in which they suggested that Tylenol—the brand name for the highly popular medication otherwise known as acetaminophen—may be linked to autism.
This came despite recent large-scale studies finding no causal link between using the drug during pregnancy and having autism spectrum disorder.
Medical groups such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics have also stated that acetaminophen is safe to use as directed during that time.
But Kennedy doubled down on Thursday, and even cited a new link between Tylenol and autism: circumcision.
“Children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism, and it’s highly likely because they’re given Tylenol,” he said.
While Kennedy did not elaborate on the research behind his claim, a widely criticized 2015 Danish report has cited a link between circumcision and autism, and theorized that the stress and pain from the procedure might be a contributing factor.
However, critics argue that the study only identified a correlation, not a causal relationship, and also contained several methodological limitations.
Despite this, Trump insisted that “there’s a tremendous amount of proof or evidence, I would say as a non-doctor” to back up Kennedy’s suggestion.
“I’ve studied this a long time ago,” he added.
But Erik Polyak, executive director of health advocacy group 314 Action, said it was “peak clownery” for RFK Jr. and Trump giving medical advice, “if clowns were allowed to wreck our health care.”
“Their expertise comes from binge-watching Grey’s Anatomy—no one should ever take medical advice from these two,“ he said.
“Their ‘findings’ are like a game of Mad-Libs, picking random words and stringing them together to sow fear and chaos. RFK Jr. is a disgrace to the scientific and medical community and it’s beyond time for him to leave office, before it’s too late.”
The autism debate is a particularly sensitive one for the Trump administration, given that Kennedy is a known conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic.
Last month, the president also took the extraordinary step of giving women medical advice, insisting they should “fight like hell” not take Tylenol during pregnancy or give it to their babies unless there was no other way to get through the pain.
“That would mean you just can’t tough it out, so that’s up to you and your doctor,” he said. “I just want to say it like it is: don’t take Tylenol. Don’t take it. Fight like hell not to take it.”
This angered pregnant women across America, some of whom took to social media to post videos of themselves taking Tylenol.
Others hit out at Trump directly for saying that women should “tough it out.”
“As someone who went through two days of labor, I don’t need lectures on toughness, and neither does any woman,” said New York Governor Kathy Hochul. “This is insulting to every mother in America.”
But Trump repeated the directive at his cabinet meeting again on Thursday.
“Just don’t take it,” he said. “You have to tough it through sometimes.”
“I’m addressing it as best I can as a non-doctor, but I’m a man of common sense.”
