WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine can be “quite lethal” as he urged the three inoculations to be administered separately to reduce what he suggested could be an elevated risk of autism.
Trump made the recommendation while signing an executive order in the Oval Office alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy to enshrine the CDC’s January recommendation of 11 childhood vaccines, down from 17.
“Effective immediately, my administration is recognizing gold standard childhood vaccine recommendations for only 11 core vaccinations against the most serious and dangerous diseases, along with the MMR, which hopefully will be split up,” Trump said.
“The MMR we wanted in three separate vaccinations, given at separate times. Together there could be a possibility they’re quite lethal, and separately, it looks like they are not at all lethal, but just very effective. So the MMR we want to have separate separate visits, separate times.”
Trump said that “they have a vaccination thing looks like the size of a bottle of soda poured into a little child’s body, and bad things happen in many too many cases.”
“Parents can still choose to give their children all of the vaccinations if they wish,” the president said. “There are some groups that have virtually no problem with autism, and they, you know, I have to say this: they they’re groups that aren’t big into the world of vaccines.”
Kennedy, a longtime vaccine safety skeptic, did not offer a specific assessment of whether shots cause autism.
“We’re only noticing it in kids who were born around 1989 or after. The older generations are not seeing those increases. So something happened in the in the mid 90s that changed our children, and it has to be an environmental exposure,” Kennedy said. “You need an environmental toxin.”
