"I think I can say that there are certain groups of people that don't take vaccines and don't take any pills that have no autism -- that have no autism. Does that tell you something?" Trump said during the September 22, 2025 press conference.
The president turned to his vaccine-skeptic Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr and asked if that was true. Kennedy replied that "some studies" pointed to the Amish.
"See, Bobby wants to be very careful with what he says, and he should, but I'm not so careful with what I say," Trump continued. "But you have certain groups. The Amish, as an example, they have essentially no autism."
Social media posts and articles parroting Trump's claim quickly rocketed across X and other platforms.
The president's claim came as he argued against Tylenol use during pregnancy, misleadingly linking the painkiller to autism, and pushed major changes to the routine vaccine schedule given to infants (archived here). The remarks were rife with talking points popular among supporters of the anti-vaccine movement.
Identifying the cause of autism -- a complex condition connected to brain development that many experts believe occurs for predominantly genetic reasons -- has been a pet cause for Kennedy, who has a long history of spreading misinformation about vaccines.
The World Health Organization said September 23 that neither acetaminophen -- the primary ingredient in Tylenol, known as paracetamol in Europe -- nor vaccines have been shown to cause autism,...
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