President Trump stood at the White House podium, addressing a room full of reporters.
“First, effective immediately, the FDA will be notifying physicians that the use of…ah-said-a…well…let’s see how we say that.”
As he struggled again to say “acetaminophen,” and asked someone off camera, “Is that OK?” when he finally managed to get his lips around the word, the moment was a perfect encapsulation of the dumbing down of expertise and the political corruption of science under this administration.
He said that taking acetaminophen, or Tylenol, while pregnant has been associated with a “very increased risk of autism,” a claim pushed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy with little to no basis in scientific fact.
“Taking Tylenol is not good,” Trump declared, as if anyone in their right mind would take medical advice from a guy who suggested injecting disinfectant to treat coronavirus.
Scientists — people who, unlike Trump and Kennedy, have actual expertise in these matters — objected. Dr. Helen Tager-Flusberg, director of the Center for Autism Research Excellence at Boston University called the announcement “appalling” and “a very significant distortion” of what science says about any possible links.
The Coalition of Autism Scientists said: “The data cited do not support the claim that Tylenol causes autism and leucovorin is a cure, and only stoke fear and falsely suggest hope when there is no simple answer.”
And Sura Alwan, a clinical teratologist at the University of British Columbia, said, “The evidence does not support a causal link between acetaminophen or vaccines and autism.”
The absurdity of Trump and Kennedy doling out medical advice, when the former promoted taking anti-malaria medication hydroxychloroquine to ward off COVID-19 — and then contracted COVID-19 himself — and the latter believes chemicals in drinking water can make someone gay or trans, should not be lost on anyone.
Everyone should ignore these crackpot Looney Tunes and trust their doctors and pediatricians, not two politicians cosplaying at science, whose long and sordid history of bad advice could lead to serious injury or death.
And while MAGA-world usually falls in line quickly to defend even Trump’s worst impulses — see Jan. 6, see Russia, see tariffs — this time Tweedledum and Tweedledee aren’t getting quite the support they’re used to. That’s how bad this is.
Less than a day after Trump made his announcement, his own administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz, went on MAGA favorite Fox News to walk it back.
“So the message is not, ‘Never take Tylenol,’ ” he said, contradicting Trump’s own words. “It’s, ‘Take Tylenol judiciously.’ Take it by talking with your doctor.”
Also on Fox, the network’s own senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel asked and answered the question pretty definitively. “Does acetaminophen during pregnancy cause autism? People out there need to know there’s absolutely no proof whatsoever that that’s the case.”
In Congress, there’s been some rare pushback, too. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told CNN he was “very concerned” and insisted, “science ought to guide these discussions.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a licensed physician, posted on X, “HHS should release the new data that it has to support this claim. The preponderance of evidence shows that this is not the case.”
And Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal blasted Trump and Kennedy’s anti-Tylenol campaign, pointing to lawsuits against the maker of Tylenol and what may be personal interests in those outcomes.
“What’s going on here has less to do with healthcare than with a campaign by the plaintiffs bar,” wrote the Journal’s editorial board. “If a drug company made the unproven claims aired at the White House, the Food and Drug Administration would threaten legal action.”
“So why the sudden alarm, complete with a presidential presser?” it continued. “The Occam’s razor answer is the influence of RFK Jr., who is carrying water for his friends in the plaintiffs bar. A who’s-who of lawsuit shops are pushing the Tylenol-autism link in federal court. The transparent goal is to drum up more claims to drive a bigger damage award or settlement.”
I’m not even sure Trump believes all of the garbage he spewed on Monday. In his inimitable way, he seemed to distance himself from what he was selling, saying, “This is based on what I feel,” and “You know, I’m making these statements from me, I’m not making them from these doctors,” and “I’m not a doctor, but I’m giving my opinion.”
So when asked if it was appropriate for him to tell the public what to do, given it was based on his “feelings,” he answered it was “absolutely appropriate.”
Chef’s kiss.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.