Former President Trump appeared to echo Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s false views about the safety of vaccines during a private phone call between the two presidential candidates that was posted online.
During the call, which Kennedy said happened on Sunday before the start of the Republican National Convention, Trump can be heard talking about the number of vaccines children receive at a young age.
From birth to age 6, infants and children are recommended to get vaccinated against 16 different diseases.
“I said I wanted to do small doses, small doses. When you feed a baby, Bobby, a vaccination and it’s like 38 different vaccines and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a 10-pound or 20-pound baby,” Trump said.
"And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically. I've seen it too many times," Trump added. "And then you hear that it doesn't have an impact."
Trump has expressed wildly different views on vaccines. Before entering politics, Trump was an avowed vaccine skeptic, often parroting the widely discredited theory that childhood vaccines, or at least high doses of them, cause autism.
In a 2015 Republican presidential debate on CNN, Trump again suggested he believed vaccines cause autism, and made comments very similar to what he told Kennedy this week.
“If you take this little beautiful baby, and you pump … I mean, it looks just like it’s meant for a horse, not for a child,” Trump said. “Just the other day, 2 years old, 2½ years old, a child, a beautiful child, went to have the vaccine and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.”
Throughout the campaign, Trump performed a complicated tap dance as he tried to negate the threat that some hardline GOP voters would defect to the independent Kennedy because of his views on vaccines, especially given Trump’s relationship with the COVID shot.
He simultaneously wants to take credit for the vaccine’s speedy development but has also criticized its use and knocked his former rivals for being too pro-vaccine.
During his presidency, Trump developed Operation Warp Speed to supercharge the development of the COVID-19 vaccine. In 2021 Trump called it “one of the greatest miracles” of his term in office.
When Biden touted the country’s vaccine-powered “comeback” during his State of the Union speech in March, Trump again claimed credit in a post on Truth Social: “You’re welcome, Joe, nine month approval time vs. 12 years that it would have taken you!”
Earlier this year, he accused RFK Jr. of being a “fake” anti-vaxxer.
Kennedy on Tuesday apologized for accidentally posting the video, saying in a post on the social media site X that he was taping with an in-house videographer when Trump called and “should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted. I apologize to the president.”
In a statement Tuesday, the Biden campaign blasted both Kennedy and Trump.
“Trump and his anti-vax bud ‘Bobby’ are spreading dangerous conspiracy theories that threaten the lifesaving care that tens of millions of people depend on,” campaign spokesman Joe Costello said. “This leaked footage is further proof Trump can’t be trusted to protect Americans’ health care. It’s frightening, and if he gains power, it could be the devastating reality for working families across the country.”
Claims of vaccination causing autism in children have been widely discredited. Numerous studies and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said there is no link between the two.
