Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accidentally claims that President Donald Trump is now autistic following the flu shot and COVID-19 vaccine he received at Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday.
The inadvertent diagnosis occurred while Kennedy was reasserting his unproven theories linking various substances to autism, when an aide quietly reminded him that Trump had received both vaccines just one day prior to prepare for his Middle East trip. Sources report Kennedy went pale, looked directly at the president, and whispered "Oh my God" before attempting to change the subject to Tylenol.
"Based on the scientific framework Secretary Kennedy has spent months establishing, and his repeated refusal during confirmation hearings to say vaccines don't cause autism, we have no choice but to conclude the president is now autistic," explained White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. "The math is pretty straightforward: vaccines cause autism, Trump got vaccines, therefore Trump has autism. It's the administration's own logic."
Kennedy, who promised in April that "by September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic," appeared visibly shaken when reporters pointed out that he now has a definitive answer: the President of the United States, who received vaccines on Friday, providing what Kennedy would presumably consider a controlled experiment with a sample size of one very important person.
The HHS Secretary allegedly will attempt to clarify his position by suggesting that perhaps some autisms are "pre-existing" and unrelated to vaccinations, but then realized this would contradict his decade-long insistence that vaccines cause autism. He then suggested maybe Trump received a "special" vaccine that doesn't cause autism, prompting the CDC director to slowly lower his head into his hands.
The president appeared to be non-chalant about his self-induced autism. "I've always been very autistic, probably the most autistic president ever, people are saying," Trump reportedly declared, misunderstanding what autism means but somehow still managing to claim he's the best at it.
White House physicians confirm they have been monitoring Trump since Friday's vaccinations for signs of the vaccine-induced autism Kennedy has repeatedly warned about, though they admit establishing a behavioral baseline has proven "philosophically challenging." One doctor noted that if vaccines cause "difficulty with social cues, obsessive fixation on narrow topics, and challenges reading a room," they're not entirely sure what changed after Friday.
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network released a statement noting that Kennedy's claims about autism are "alarming, untrue, impossible, and ableist," but acknowledged that if the administration insists on using its own logic, then yes, by their own framework, Trump is now autistic and "honestly, that explains a lot about the Cabinet meetings."
Kennedy has promised his team "will make the proof" for his autism theories, though critics note he's now inadvertently made himself the Secretary of Health and Human Services who diagnosed his own boss with a vaccine injury one day after said boss received vaccines.
Trump was reportedly doing fine, exhibiting what Kennedy would presumably classify as "peak autistic performance" while discussing Middle East policy, though medical experts clarified that receiving vaccines on Friday and showing existing behavioral patterns on Saturday doesn't actually prove causation, no matter how much the HHS Secretary wishes it did.
