What did Donald Trump do today?

He regurgitated a mess of conspiracy theories about vaccines, autism, and Tylenol.

In a rambling press appearance today with Robert Kennedy Jr., Trump made a number of dangerous and medically illiterate claims about vaccines, autism, and the over-the-counter pain medicine Tylenol, based on his "feelings" and—to all appearances—conspiracy theories of the kind that Kennedy believes.

Trump appears to have swallowed the totally unfounded theory that Tylenol use during pregnancy, also known as acetaminophen, is connected to autism. Kennedy, who is more or less open in his embrace of eugenics and seems to regard people on the autism spectrum with a mixture of pity and contempt, has seized on this drug that almost every American has taken at one time as the root cause of the fantastically complex range of behaviors that fall under the autism spectrum. In reality, there is no known cause of autism spectrum disorders, and there is almost certainly no one cause.

Trump, who struggled to pronounce the word "acetaminophen" and seemed to be seeing it for the first time as he read it from a notecard, nevertheless felt confident telling pregnant women that "taking Tylenol is, uh, not good." It's not clear if Trump knows that acetaminophen is the one of the only over-the-counter pain medicine that is approved for use during pregnancy: actual studies have shown that it is much safer for developing fetuses than naproxen sodium (Aleve) and aspirin, which have been linked to lower birth weights (though not to autism). But he did seem to believe that pain is just something that pregnant women should just have to endure: "If you can't tough it out, if you can't do it—that's what you're gonna have to do."

Medical organizations all over the world immediately denounced Trump's statements. 

He also listed his objection to the current vaccine schedule for infants: that "eighty" shots are given at once, or perhaps eighty vaccines in one shot—it wasn't clear. In his own words:

I think it has—I think it's very bad. They're pumping, it looks like they're pumping into a horse. You have a little child, a little fragile child, and you get a, a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess. 80 different blends. And they pump it in. Uh, so ideally, a woman won't take Tylenol, and uh, on the vaccines, it would be good, instead of one visit where they pump the baby, you load it up with stuff, uh, you do it over a period of four times or five times.

Trump seemed mostly to be talking about the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella (although Trump seemed unable to remember what the R stood for). All three can cause death or serious lifelong complications in children. This is what an infant getting vaccinated actually looks like:

There's a particularly strong whiff of hypocrisy for Trump on the issue of what drugs people should be allowed to take at what stage of clinical certainty. He nearly died of COVID-19 in early October 2020. It's very likely that what saved his life was a highly experimental therapy called a monoclonal antibody cocktail—one that had barely begun human trials, and that he was able to receive only because he effectively gave himself special permission: the FDA, which answered to Trump, has to approve each such exception. He also had close personal and financial ties to the CEO of the drug company that made the treatment. 

Monoclonal antibodies have since been shown to be highly effective in treating COVID-19, but the ones Trump received were not available to the public on a temporary, emergency basis until several months later. About 60,000 Americans died of COVID-19 in the intervening period. The therapies that Trump recommended for people who didn't have special access to experimental drugs, at an eerily similar press conference in April 2020, were the antimalaria drug chloroquinine and the injection of household cleaning products.

Why does this matter?

• Past a certain point, it doesn't matter if Trump actually believes Kennedy's anti-scientific conspiracy theories, or just doesn't care if they become policy. 

• An absentee parent with no medical knowledge shouldn't be making national health policy based on what he "feels."