Trump Transition Chair Falsely Claims Vaccines Cause Autism on CNN: ‘Why Do You Think Vaccines Are Safe?’
Trump 2024 transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick suggested on CNN, Wednesday that vaccines were responsible for an increase in autism and were unsafe.
During a discussion about Trump surrogate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on The Source, CNN host Kaitlan Collins asked Lutnick whether it was true former President Donald Trump had promised Kennedy control over the public health agencies.
Lutnick responded:
So, I spent two-and-a-half hours this week with Bobby Kennedy Jr. and it was the most extraordinary thing, because let’s face it, we’ve all heard on the news all sorts of sort of snarky comments about him. And I said, “So tell me, how is it going to go?” and he said, “Why don’t you just listen to me explain things?” and what he explained was when he was born, we had three vaccines, and autism was one in 10,000. Now a baby is born with 76 vaccines because, in 1986, they waved product liability for vaccines. And here’s the best one. They started paying the people at the NIH, right? They pay them a piece of the money for the vaccine companies–
As Collins tried to interrupt, Lutnick snapped, “Let me finish. And so all of these vaccines came out without product liability. So what happened now? Autism is one-in-34.”
“Hang on,” interrupted Collins. “Okay, neither of us are doctors. Vaccines are safe.”
Lutnick questioned, “Why do you think vaccines are safe? There’s no product liability anymore. They’re not proven.”
After Collins replied, “Kids get them and they’re fine,” Lutnick questioned, “Why do you think they’re fine?” to which Collins declared, “Because they’re proven scientifically to be so. They go through rigorous amounts of testing.”
Lutnick argued, “There was one-in-10,000 people with autism. We all know so many more people with autism than had it when we were young. Oh, come on.”
“But vaccines don’t cause autism, which is what RFK pushes, which is why people are concerned that he could get a job like HHS,” said Collins, prompting Lutnick to insist that Kennedy was not interested in becoming health secretary and merely wanted “the data.”
“He wants the data so he can say these things are unsafe,” claimed Lutnick. “He says, ‘If you give me the data, all I want is the data, and I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe and that if you pull the product liability, the companies will yank these vaccines right off of the market.’ So that’s his point.”
Collins shot back, “RFK Jr. is a vaccine skeptic. He pushes lies about vaccines.”
“He just wants data,” argued Lutnick. “I think it would be pretty cool to give him the data and see what he comes up with.”
Watch above via CNN.
