President-elect Donald Trump, in a wide-ranging press conference from Mar-a-Lago Monday, declared he doesn't like vaccine mandates for childhood diseases, blamed Democrats for them, and appeared to not be aware that every state in the nation has childhood vaccine mandates that include many if not most or all of the CDC's recommended vaccination schedule of 15 immunizations from birth to age 16 to protect children and the general population from serious and often deadly diseases including polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, and rubella, seasonal flu and COVID-19.
While declaring he supports the polio vaccine, Trump appeared to veer off into school closings when asked about childhood vaccine mandates.
Responding to a reporter, Trump declared he is "a big believer" in the polio vaccine, but cautioned, "I think everything should be looked at."
Asked, "Do you think schools should mandate vaccines?" Trump replied, "I don't like mandates."
"I'm not a big mandate person, so, you know, I was against mandates, uh, mostly Democrat governors did the mandates and, uh, they they did a very poor thing. It was, you know, in retrospect, they made a big mistake. Uh, having to do with the education of children. You know, they lost like a year or two years of their lives. The mandate was a bad thing. I was against the mandate."
Trump on the campaign trial repeatedly stated he would defund any school that requires childhood vaccines.
"I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate," he said in June, PBS reported at the time.
He repeated the exact same line in August:
Trump fielded several other questions about vaccines on Monday, in the wake of his controversial remarks to TIME magazine in an interview published last week.
Asked point-blank if he believes "there's a connection between vaccines and autism?" Trump did not answer the question directly, claiming there are "some very brilliant people looking at it." There have been numerous studies debunking the false belief, which Trump for years has promoted repeatedly.
NBC News/MSNBC's Garret Haake asked Trump about his nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: "Robert Kennedy? He's on the Hill today. He's meeting with senators. What do you say to people who are worried that his views on vaccines will translate into policies that'll make their kids less safe?"
Trump, appearing to side with RFK Jr.'s stated yet false claim there are no vaccines that are safe and effective, also appeared to say there are nations that have a lower infectious disease rate than the U.S. and do not use vaccines, which is false.
"No," Trump replied, "I think he's gonna be much less radical than you would think. I think he's got a very open mind, or I wouldn't have put him there. He's gonna be very much less radical. But there are problems. I mean, we don't do as well as a lot of other nations, and those nations use nothing. And uh we're gonna find out what those problems are."
Last week, saying he -- and not the infectious disease scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) -- would be the one to decide, in consultation with anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which vaccines the federal government should cut, Trump had again invoked the false and widely debunked conspiracy theory that links autism to the life-saving drugs. The President-elect's remarks were met with concern and condemnation.
There had not been, and is not, any indication from CDC that any key vaccines currently on its schedule should be removed, with the exception of certain "products [that] are no longer distributed or recommended for use in children and adolescents in the United States." ACIP, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and not the White House or the Secretary of Health and Human Services, makes recommendations to any changes to the childhood vaccine schedule annually. CDC approves changes, this year for example, in coordination with six major medical organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, according to the CDC.