MaddowBlog-'Too much liquid': Trump pretends he's qualified to give medical advice (he's not)

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Those who tuned in to the president’s event would’ve learned just as much about science if they’d spent an hour staring at a blank wall in the dark.

Mr. Let’s Inject Disinfectants Into People is apparently convinced that he’s qualified to dispense advice about medicine and vaccinations.

He is not. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-09-23T14:06:27.425Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/-much-liquid-trump-pretends-s-qualified-give-medical-advice-s-not-rcna233159

Those who tuned in to the White House announcement, however, quickly learned otherwise. As my MSNBC colleague Brandy Zadrozny explained:

In a wild and rambling speech from the White House on Monday that contradicted mainstream scientific consensus and medical guidance, President Donald Trump advised pregnant women not to take Tylenol, claiming it was linked to autism in children, and said expectant mothers should take it only if they ‘can’t tough it out’ during a high fever.

....Trump said, “Don’t take Tylenol” 11 times. He suggested medical organizations might be corrupt. He suggested physicians might be corrupt. As part of a weird anti-vaccine screed, he even declared, in reference to infant vaccinations, “It’s too much liquid.”

Trump: "It's too much liquid. Too many different things are going into that baby at too big a number. The size of this thing when you look at it. It's like 80 different vaccines and beyond vaccines."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-09-22T21:29:42.466Z

Pretty much everything the president had to say was at odds with scientific evidence and the conclusions of those with actual qualifications — a point the Republican seemed to acknowledge over the course of the event. In fact, Trump said his conclusions were rooted in his “feelings” and his ignorance-based version of “common sense,” as opposed to those who base their findings on “studies.”

Paul Offit, a pediatrician and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia vaccine researcher, told The Washington Post, “That was the most dangerously irresponsible press conference in the realm of public health in American history.” Arthur Caplan, the founding head of the division of medical ethics at N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine, told The New York Times, “The announcement on autism was the saddest display of a lack of evidence, rumors, recycling old myths, lousy advice, outright lies and dangerous advice I have ever witnessed by anyone in authority in the world claiming to know anything about science.”....

Trump is, in other words, arguably the last person anyone should ever turn to for medical advice, despite his eagerness to dispense it.

The president claimed at one point during his event that there are “a lot of stupid people in this country running things.” It was, oddly enough, the one thing he said over the course of the hour that I found compelling.