Trump’s mixed record on vaccines in spotlight after RFK Jr. endorsement
As president, Donald Trump championed the development of the coronavirus vaccine that allowed public life to resume amid a pandemic that had killed nearly half a million Americans by early 2021. He signed an executive order to boost flu vaccination rates and develop shots that provide better protection. Amid a 2019 measles outbreak, he encouraged parents to get their children vaccinated.
But Trump has also been a longtime vaccine skeptic who once falsely linked childhood vaccinations to autism, and as he campaigns for another presidency, he is threatening to withhold money from schools with vaccine mandates.
His appointment this week of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman of a prominent anti-vaccine group called Children’s Health Defense before his run for president, as an honorary co-chair of his transition team for a possible second term thrust questions about Trump’s views on vaccines into the spotlight. Kennedy had suspended his independent bid for president last week and endorsed Trump.
Trump’s contradictory public statements and record on vaccines – coupled with Kennedy’s new role – raise concerns among health experts about what a second Trump administration would mean for public health.
Health experts worry that Trump is, above all, a politician who plays to the crowd in front of him and say that can be a dangerous game when it comes to lifesaving vaccines, especially amid rising vaccine hesitancy driven by misinformation.
They fear Kennedy’s perch on the transition team would allow him to place anti-science figures in key governmental health positions.
“Any role of an anti-vaccine seller in a presidential administration would be a very bad thing for American society,” said John P. Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, pointing to rising rates of measles amid declining vaccination numbers. “Kids will die again.”
In a July phone call with Kennedy, whom Trump had considered to lead a vaccine safety commission in 2017, Trump said the two men could “do big things together.” Trump spoke about vaccines during the call, saying “something’s wrong with that whole system,” according to a video posted online by Kennedy’s son, Bobby Kennedy III.
“When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a, you know, 10-pound or 20-pound baby,” Trump said at one point, suggesting that babies can “change radically” as a result.
A Trump campaign official told the Washington Post that Trump is referring solely to coronavirus vaccine mandates in publicly funded schools – not vaccinations against other diseases on the childhood immunization schedule – in his threat to defund schools. But Trump has yet to publicly clarify what he means, and his campaign did not respond to questions about his position on childhood immunizations, whether he believes they contribute to autism and whether his views on vaccines align with Kennedy’s.
Kennedy has falsely called the coronavirus vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever” and repeatedly questioned the necessity of the childhood vaccine schedule while incorrectly linking it to autism.
Kennedy’s team did not respond to requests for comment but had previously told the Post he is not “anti-vaccine” even as his representatives stood by his comments about the coronavirus vaccine and repeated misleading statements about childhood vaccines.
Kennedy recently told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that he and Trump are “working on policy issues together” and that he’s been asked to “help pick the people who will be running the government.”
The Trump campaign indicated it is too early to determine what role, if any, Kennedy would play in the administration if Trump wins. “There have been no such discussions of who will serve in a second Trump Cabinet and Administration,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said.
A former Trump health official told the Post the campaign tapped Kennedy for the transition team to bring “diversity of thought” as he seeks to rebuild his health team. The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their relationship with Trump, stressed that Trump and Kennedy are aligned in their views regarding personal freedoms – not vaccines.
“There’s no way he’s going down as ‘let’s get rid of childhood vaccines.’ There’s no way in hell,” the former official said of Trump.
But Trump has a history of repeatedly expressing skepticism about childhood vaccines.
Trump linked the increase in autism diagnoses with immunizations after a 2007 news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate to kick off a fundraising effort by an autism advocacy group. “We’re giving these massive injections at one time, and I really think it does something to the children,” he said in an interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He said on “Fox & Friends” in 2012 that children “get this monster shot” and are “different a month later.” During a presidential primary debate in 2015, he said a childhood vaccine “looks just like it’s meant for a horse, not for a child.”
Health experts strongly rebuff Trump’s rhetoric – and Kennedy’s – falsely tying childhood vaccines to autism. There is no scientific evidence to support such claims. They said Trump’s exaggeration of the size of the shots echoes common anti-vaccine rhetoric.
“There’s no connection between vaccines and autism, which has been proven multiple times, and there is no risk to having multiple vaccine immunogens in a standard childhood regimen,” Moore said.
Medical experts are also quick to point out that despite Trump’s rhetoric, he was responsible for one of the fastest vaccine developments in American history and, as president, supported the flu and measles vaccines.
In April 2019, during the worst measles outbreaks since vaccination had eliminated the disease in the United States in 2000, then-President Trump encouraged children to get vaccinated.
“They have to get the shots. The vaccinations are so important. This is really going around now. They have to get their shots,” he told CNN’s Joe Johns after being asked what he wanted parents to know.
Later that year, Trump signed an executive order to improve the flu vaccine as a matter of national security.
Trump also initially touted the successful rollout of the coronavirus vaccine. Shortly after it became widely available to the public, Trump promoted the shot at an Alabama rally in August 2021 amid a COVID-19 surge. “I recommend take the vaccines. I did it. It’s good. Take the vaccines,” he said, drawing boos.
Some supporters booed him again at an event with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in Texas later that year when he informed them that he’d received a booster shot. “Look, we did something that was historic, we saved tens of millions of lives worldwide,” Trump responded.
Trump has stopped emphasizing his administration’s role in the vaccine’s development despite health experts considering it to be one of the greatest scientific achievements in their lifetimes. Trump’s avoidance of the topic became especially evident during the Republican primary when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis raised questions about the safety and efficacy of the coronavirus vaccines and Florida’s surgeon general urged residents not to get the mRNA vaccines.
“He would probably like to take credit for it, but he can’t, because that’s just not the group he’s appealing to,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump amid a razor-thin election might bring into the fold voters who blamed Trump for covid mandates and sought refuge with the former Democrat-turned-independent candidate, said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll.
“Not unlike most politicians, he’s trying to appeal to these different factions in the party while not alienating the other factions,” Franklin said about Trump’s inconsistent statements on vaccines.
At a North Carolina campaign rally in August, Trump promised to rehire everyone who had lost their job over the military’s requirement that service members be vaccinated against the coronavirus. “I will rehire every patriot who was fired from the military with an apology and with backpay,” he said.
Trump on Friday plans to speak at a D.C. summit organized by Moms for Liberty, an influential group of conservative parental rights advocates. Tiffany Justice, who co-founded the group in 2021, said she hopes Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump will prompt the candidate to further question the science behind the childhood vaccination schedule.
After the pandemic, “Americans do not trust our institutions,” Justice said. “Vaccines are being forced on our kids, and they don’t seem to need those vaccines.”
In an effort to appeal to this anti-mandate strain within the Republican Party, Trump has repeatedly said he would “not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate,” drawing loud cheers and applause at campaign events.
The share of Americans who believe vaccines are safe has fallen since 2021, while those who believe debunked claims that vaccines contain toxins and cause autism is rising, according to an Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania poll released in November.
The percentage of kindergartners whose parents sought vaccine exemptions hit a new high of 3 percent in the 2022-2023 school year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Trump campaign did not answer questions about how his threat to restrict school funding would work, given that schools are primarily funded by state and local dollars. Nor do public schools typically require the coronavirus vaccine.
Trump’s rhetoric against vaccination, a bedrock tool of public health, could keep more children from being inoculated against preventable diseases, said Offit, the pediatrician who specializes in virology and immunology.
“It’s a dangerous game we play when you push back on vaccines,” Offit warned, adding that he’s a child of the 1950′s who remembers polio. “Talk about going back on making America great again.”