Trump's misleading comments on autism validate the 'MAHA' movement and reveal its political potency

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NEW YORK (AP) — As medical professionals react with alarm to President Donald Trump's unproven statements about Tylenol, childhood vaccines and autism, a different group of Americans is feeling vindicated.

For the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement, a diverse coalition that includes supporters of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., anti-vaccine activists and others who distrust the American health care system, Trump's Monday announcement was a watershed moment.

“I think that for the ‘MAHA’ movement, this is like the dark clouds have finally parted and a single ray of sunshine is shining down,” Del Bigtree, Kennedy’s former communications director and founder of the advocacy group Informed Consent Action Network, said in an interview Tuesday.

By amplifying the movement's long-held concerns about vaccines and pharmaceutical products, Trump handed a major victory to a group that has been growing in influence since he tapped Kennedy to oversee the nation's health services. It's a coalition that is viewed as a potentially important voting bloc for Republicans, but had become impatient with what they saw as inaction by his administration.

Yet Trump's platforming of inaccurate health claims on the White House stage also concerns medical professionals, including some Republican lawmakers. After the announcement Monday, they urged people to listen to their doctors and warned that following Trump's guidance for pregnant women to entirely avoid Tylenol and for parents to delay vaccinations could lead to other harmful health outcomes.

In Monday's news conference, Trump claimed that pregnant women using acetaminophen, the painkiller known by the brand name Tylenol (or paracetamol outside the U.S.), has contributed to the rise in autism cases in the U.S. in recent years. While some studies have suggested a potential correlation between the two, many others haven't found that concern.

Experts say the research is inconclusive and the increase is mainly due to better diagnoses and a new definition for the disorder that now includes mild cases on a spectrum. In addition, the Coalition of Autism Scientists said Monday that acetaminophen use during pregnancy hadn’t increased in recent decades like autism rates have.

The president urged pregnant women to “fight like hell” to avoid taking the most commonly used drug in the country. His advice also went beyond the more nuanced Food and Drug Administration guidance released Monday, which notes that the potential correlation is an area of ongoing debate and that acetaminophen is the only over-the-counter drug approved for treating fever during pregnancy.

Untreated fevers in pregnancy, particularly the first trimester, increase the risk for miscarriages, preterm birth and other problems, according to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

Trump's comments also advanced a narrative discredited by decades of evidence that the ingredients in vaccines or taking immunizations close together can cause autism in children. Those claims appeal to ‘MAHA’ figures, including Kennedy, who have long insisted that vaccines and autism are related.

“I think for many of us it was like: It’s about time,” John Gilmore, executive director of the Autism Action Network, said in an interview. “And it just felt extremely validating that the criticisms we’ve been making of the vaccine program and health care are finally being taken seriously.”

Kennedy's core supporters in the anti-vaccine movement were quick to revel in the moment on social media and on podcasts, relieved the announcement did not shy away from vaccines as some had anticipated it would.

“We should all just be incredibly grateful,” MAHA Action president Tony Lyons said on Steve Bannon’s show Monday, adding that Trump should be known as the “MAHA” president.

The president and his health secretary directly addressed the parents of children with autism, saying their trepidation about vaccines had not been affirmed enough from the national stage.

“I want to reassure the people in the autism community that we will be uncompromising and relentless in our search for answers,” Kennedy said.

The news conference also featured comments from two mothers who expressed appreciation. One said she had been “crying out for help, for answers, for years.”

Josephine Lukito, a journalism and media professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said appealing to maternal concerns about children's health can be “incredibly persuasive” and is a common strategy in the anti-vaccine movement.

She said Trump's comments also leaned on other rhetorical strategies that are often used to spread vaccine misinformation, including focusing on emotional anecdotes instead of specific data.

At one point in the news conference, Trump told a story about a woman who used to work with him in Trump Tower and claimed her young son got a high fever after receiving a vaccine. The president then added he knew at least two other people who were “badly hurt” by vaccinations, but did not go into detail.

“These sort of anecdotes are very, very salient among anti-vaxxers because they tug at our heartstrings,” Lukito said in an interview. “But one story does not a statistic make.”

The vast majority of parents in the U.S. are keeping their children up-to-date with recommended childhood vaccines, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says rates have been falling for the past five years. Nationwide, the percentage of kindergartners receiving the most common childhood vaccines dropped well below 95%, the level needed to protect the community against an outbreak.

During the news conference, Trump said he was a “believer” in vaccines, but a different message came through for some of those watching who have long been skeptics.

“I think what happened today is going to make parents think, Well, wait a minute, I don’t even think I want to vaccinate now,” Polly Tommey, director of the streaming arm of the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, said in a video posted on X. “Because if you read between the lines of what Trump was saying, vaccines are unsafe, ineffective, can and do kill and cause autism.”

Trump’s comments were praised by many of his allies in Congress. Rep. Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee, vice chair of a House subcommittee on health, wrote on X that Trump and Kennedy’s move represented “real action” on autism and a turnaround from previously, when “autism rates climbed while Washington stayed silent.”

But the announcement created uneasiness among other prominent Republicans and doctors, including Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a gastroenterologist who has pressed Kennedy on vaccines.

“HHS should release the new data that it has to support this claim,” Cassidy wrote on X in response to Trump’s advice to women not to take Tylenol during pregnancy. “The preponderance of evidence shows that this is not the case. The concern is that women will be left with no options to manage pain in pregnancy. We must be compassionate to this problem.”

In Tennessee, Republican state Sen. Richard Briggs, a cardiothoracic surgeon, cautioned people to check with their physicians about acetaminophen and vaccinations. In a phone interview, the Knoxville lawmaker also expressed concern about the administration firing some internationally recognized scientists in the field.

North Dakota Republican state Sen. Judy Lee, who worked 10 years doing chemical analyses in hospital clinics and labs, said in an interview that she is “extremely disappointed that the president has chosen to make such a firm statement about something that has no scientific basis.”

“For the president to make that kind of pronouncement with no personal expertise, no scientific background, no support of the experts, which he has either gotten rid of or discounted at the CDC, concerns me a great deal,” Lee said.

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Associated Press writers Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota, Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee, Linley Sanders in Washington and Devi Shastri in Milwaukee contributed to this report.