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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Tuesday, September 23rd. I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that says that if you want evidence-based medical advice you can count on, run away from the White House as fast as you possibly can. [music break] On today’s show, the Supreme Court signals it will probably, maybe, overturn a near-century-old law for President Donald Trump, and Disney announces Jimmy Kimmel Live! will return to late night. But let’s start with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., noted anti-vaxxer and, apparently, part-time detective. Back in April, R.F.K. Jr. announced at a cabinet meeting that he was on the hunt for the real cause of autism, a hunt that would take no prisoners, ask big questions and find the one true answer to a medical question that’s been researched for decades by September. 

[clip of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] We are going at your direction. We are gonna know by September. We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s gonna involve hundreds of scientists from around the world. By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures. 

Jane Coaston: Well, on Monday, the Trump administration announced that the hunt was over. Sort of. In an upcoming report that already has raised way, way, way more questions than it could possibly answer, the government announced that it was looking to link rising autism rates to the use of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol by pregnant women. But in some countries, like, say, Cuba, the drug goes under the name paracetamol, a fact which it seems the president of the United States was not aware of. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] There’s a rumor, and I don’t know if it’s so or not, that Cuba, they don’t have Tylenol because they don’t have the money for Tylenol, and they have virtually no autism. 

Jane Coaston: Except as I mentioned earlier, Cuba does have acetaminophen, AKA paracetamol, AKA Tylenol. But blaming autism on Tylenol with no evidence is part and parcel of what the Make America Healthy Again movement actually looks like, acting based on vibes and feels and ignoring actual evidence, and putting the responsibility for public health on the backs of individuals, particularly women. Because Tylenol is the only drug approved to reduce fevers in pregnant women. And high fevers can be incredibly, incredibly dangerous during pregnancy. But Trump doesn’t seem to care much about that. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] They are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary. That’s, for instance, in cases of extremely high fever that you feel you can’t tough it out, you can’t do it. I guess there’s that. 

Jane Coaston: Note, don’t do anything Trump just said. There is so, so, so much more I could say about this absolute train wreck of a press conference that will only serve to make people more anxious and less informed. So to try to talk it out, I spoke to Brandy Zadrozny, a journalist covering misinformation and extremism for MSNBC. Brandy, welcome to What a Day. 

Brandy Zadrozny: Thank you, and what a day. 

Jane Coaston: So just on a very basic level, why is the Trump administration making this announcement right now. What does it actually mean and what’s their motivation here? 

Brandy Zadrozny: Okay, so why they’re making it now, I think it’s pretty clear, and it’s because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised that by September we would have the cause for autism. Now, in the meantime, since he made that promise over the summer, it has been bad news after bad news after bad news for the Trump administration in terms of public health. I mean, we’ve had the gutting of research, we have had cancelation of research. The big vaccine panel that recommends vaccines was all fired by Kennedy. The experts were gone and in their place came these anti-vaccine critics. And there’s just been really bad news out of the Trump administration. Like we haven’t had any good news for a while. Trump needed what he thought was a win in terms of solving autism. And um it seems that he pressured Kennedy to get out a report earlier than maybe it was ready. Kennedy for months has been digging into the data behind vaccines where he thinks the autism and vaccine link will all be revealed. It’s called the vaccine safety data link, but nothing has come of that yet. And so Trump wanted something and this is what we got. 

Jane Coaston: So I was talking to my team earlier and it really did seem like a performance. Like science is not like, you don’t give science deadlines. 

Brandy Zadrozny: And he even did say, Trump said yesterday when he was talking to reporters, you know, if I’m wrong, okay, we’re wrong. Which is just, again, it’s the wildest way to roll out such a sweeping proclamation about children and public health and pregnant women. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, and what gets me is R.F.K. Jr., he does what I call the gish gallop. He does that style of argumentation, which is basically just keep throwing things at you and you get so overwhelmed that you’re like, fine, fine. You’re just too tired to actually argue with them. But can you help just fact check this? As someone who’s been reporting on this, what do we know about the research the administration is citing and what are real actual doctors and researchers saying about this. 

Brandy Zadrozny: I have not seen yet, and one might come, but I have not seen a sort of data sheet. I have seen a report yet to accompany this press conference. And there have been a couple of studies that have shown a possible link between conditions and acetaminophen use. Like that that is real. But what Kennedy does and what you’re just alluding to is he does this thing where he throws out numbers at you, but he also ignores far larger studies. In 2024 there was this huge study that was published in JAMA and it um looked at some two and a half million Swedish children and it showed no link between autism, ADHD, or any sort of intellectual disability, and Tylenol or acetaminophen. The majority of the evidence in front of us at this moment shows that that link is just not real. Um. But you have again like the report was due, you know, the boss said now is the time and so this is sort of the best that they have. 

Jane Coaston: I know that this this seems like kind of an obvious question, but I think I want to talk it out with you because Trump repeated several times that people should avoid taking Tylenol and said that quote, “nothing bad can happen. It can only good happen.” Now aside from grammar that raises other questions, I have to ask what are the risks of making connections like this on such a big stage with so little research? It’s like, yo, what? 

Brandy Zadrozny: So there has been a real debate, even within the anti-vaccine movement about Tylenol for years and years. There are some doctors in that anti-vaccine movement. And even they, for the most part, when it comes to Tylenol, they’ll generally say, you don’t wanna mess around with a high fever. You know, when babies get high fevers, danger can happen, right? Like it can cause a host of maladies, and I’m not a doctor, but to the brain and the body that can be sometimes unrecoverable. 

Jane Coaston: And Tylenol is the only over-the-counter medication approved for high fevers in pregnant women. 

Brandy Zadrozny: 100%. So, and a high fever is is a danger zone. It’s a very dangerous thing to have a high, high fever. Um. So having Trump come out today and say, do not take Tylenol, just don’t take it unless you just can’t tough it out, it was just such a bold statement and I I, part of you wants to say, no one’s gonna believe this, right? Like no pregnant woman is like, oh, I had a fever, but you know. My president just said not to, so I would never do it over it. 

Jane Coaston: No no because I think that–

Brandy Zadrozny: It’s so unbelievable. 

Jane Coaston: I also think that there is no more vulnerable time in your life than when you’re pregnant. And one of the things that really grinds my gears about the whole MAHA movement is putting the onus on women for everything. Like, it’s women’s fault if their children are diagnosed with autism. And I think we see this over and over again. Obviously it’s your fault, you did it. You know, a better woman would have never given her child vaccines or Tylenol or done anything. And so what do you think that says about RFK Jr. and the MAHA movement’s big picture strategy when it comes to women’s health.

Brandy Zadrozny: That there’s a whole fallacy of the natural health movement that doing nothing is always the best thing, right? That natural is always best option. From home birth to um to what we feed our children, to organic everything, like that, it’s just a prevailing narrative inside that movement. And it’s often not true. And I think you’re totally right. I’ve always said that this is a movement led by men but powered by women. I think it’s important not to forget, too, that like this movement is one of harassment too. It always has been, especially online. Like when a woman’s baby has died, you’ll have a group of other mothers within this movement saying, have you looked at vaccines? And the narrative is that she feels so bad that she gave her baby autism by giving vaccines that she is now doing this thing to hurt all of us. 

Jane Coaston: At the end of the day, we are getting what I would say, real bullshit information from our health from the government right now. The CDC is majorly gutted at this point, the HHS is obviously compromised as we’ve just been talking about, and the NIH is too. And I think also since COVID, there have just been so many people on the right and the left who just don’t trust doctors anymore, don’t trust the government advice even previous to the Trump administration, and they just want to do their own research. So when it comes to getting real, reliable information related to medicine and our health, who can we trust at this point? 

Brandy Zadrozny: You’re right, we cannot trust the CDC at this point. It’s not an agency that we can go to for good health information, it’s just not. But there are, in some states, there are other institutions being born. In the West and in the Northeast to help you deal with this and to help answer the questions of like what vaccines are available and when can you get them and where can you go. Also, you know medical associations, groups like the um AAP has said, you know we are gonna do our own vaccine recommendations. We are not gonna even go to the CDC meetings anymore. They called them illegitimate. I think you can follow your trusted news sources and try to get information there, but it really is it’s a sad time for for institutional trust around medicine. And I think, you’re definitely right. I think it’s something that we saw start to happen with COVID and it’s just ballooned into this monster that it’s hard to know where to go. It’s hard to know. 

Jane Coaston: Brandy, thank you so much for joining me. 

Brandy Zadrozny: Uh, my pleasure. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with MSNBC journalist, Brandy Zadrozny. We’ll link to her work in the show notes. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five star review on Apple podcasts, watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of unnamed ABC news host] It’s just been announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live will return to our air tomorrow. 

Jane Coaston: Jimmy Kimmel Live is back, mostly. All eyes will be on Kimmel tonight as he returns to ABC’s lineup after the network indefinitely suspended his show last week over comments he made about the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. But he won’t be back everywhere. Sinclair Broadcast Group, which controls nearly 40 ABC-affiliated stations across the country, said it won’t bring Kimmel’s show back to its stations just yet. Disney’s decision to pull the show in the first place, which coincidentally came just hours after the head of the Federal Communications Commission suggested Kimmel should get the boot, set off a firestorm. As President Trump tightens his grip on the media in unprecedented ways. More than 400 big names in the entertainment industry, including Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, and Selena Gomez, signed on to an open letter from the American Civil Liberties Union protesting Kimmel’s suspension. And it unleashed days of protests in cities across the country, including Hollywood, where Jimmy Kimmel live tapes. So it raised eyebrows when ABC’s The View, which talks about, well, everything, was uncharacteristically quiet about Kimmel. But host Whoopi Goldberg addressed it on Monday. 

[clip of Whoopi Goldberg] Did y’all really think we weren’t gonna talk about Jimmy Kimmel? I mean, have you watched the show over the last 29 seasons? So you know, no one silences us. 

Jane Coaston: Hmm. I mean, one could be forgiven for thinking they weren’t going to talk about it when they just didn’t. But I digress. ABC, for its part, said in a statement Monday, quote, “we have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.” And now we wait with bated breath to hear what, if anything, Kimmel has to say about the whole ordeal. The Supreme Court handed Trump yet another win on Monday, with an unsigned order upholding his firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, for now. When Trump first moved to fire Slaughter in March, he challenged a 90-year-old legal precedent that says presidents cannot remove leaders of independent agencies unless there’s a reason, like misconduct or neglect of duty, neither of which she’s been accused of. So, obviously, she filed a lawsuit to get her job back, and ever since, it’s been bouncing through the courts with varying results. Reinstating and removing Slaughter from the job with every ruling. This latest order upholds her firing until the Supreme Court hears arguments on the case in December, signaling the justices are open to overturning the Depression-era ruling in Humphrey’s executor versus the United States, and greatly expanding the president’s executive powers. This, of course, is just the latest in a string of cases weighing President Trump’s ability to remove leaders of independent agencies. So far, they have allowed him to remove members of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, with the reasoning that these agencies exercise executive power. If the Supreme Court rules in his favor, Trump could have the power to fire agency leaders he disagrees with, although there may be some exceptions. 

[clip of Karoline Leavitt] Well, Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you’re referring to, so you should get your facts straight number one. 

Jane Coaston: That’s White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt lovingly reprimanding a reporter Monday while vehemently denying that Trump’s borders czar, Tom Homan, accepted cash in a paper bag last year during an FBI investigation, even though the New York Times reported there is an audio recording of him doing so. The story is a little confusing, so let me explain. According to the New York Times, Homan, who was not yet holding any official government position, took a $50,000 payment as part of quote, “a long-running counterintelligence investigation that wasn’t actually targeting him.” But when he was recorded taking the money in exchange for promises of government contracts, the Department of Justice did open an investigation into Homan for bribery and other crimes. Citing unnamed sources, the Times reported in its story published over the weekend that the Trump administration shut down that investigation. According to the paper, officials of the Justice Department said it did not have sufficient evidence to charge Homan. Now even reporters at the Times acknowledge that it’s unclear whether this investigation would have been closed regardless of who was in the White House. But we feel obligated to point out that this story lands at a time when many questions have been asked about how much control Trump exercises over who the DOJ investigates and who it does not. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Larry Ellison’s one of them. He’s involved. He is a great guy. Michael Dell is involved. I hate to tell you this, but a man named Lachlan is involved, you know who Lachland is? That’s a very unusual name, Lachlan Murdoch. 

[clip of unnamed Fox news host] Mr. Murdoch. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] I believe, and you should call him, and Rupert is is probably going to be in the group. I think they’re going to be in the group.

Jane Coaston: That’s Trump on Fox News teasing a potential group of US-based investors who could take control of TikTok, whom he called, quote, “American patriots.” In the proposed deal, China would license a copy of its powerful algorithm, the app’s secret sauce, to the American investor group. American companies would own roughly 80% of the app, while TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, and other Chinese investors would own less than 20%. Ellison’s Oracle would oversee the security of American users’ data. Which means that China, crucially, would no longer have access to the data. A board of directors made up of national security and cybersecurity experts would have six seats on the seven-member board, that last seat being selected by ByteDance. But that person would be excluded from TikTok’s security committee. According to a White House official, the deal would not give the federal government an equity stake or, quote, “golden share,” which would effectively give Trump veto power over key business decisions. But the Wall Street Journal reports that the government is expected to get an unprecedented multi-billion dollar fee from investors for negotiating the deal, which some experts say could be illegal. The president is expected to sign an executive order to move the deal forward this week. TikTok’s fate has been in flux for over a year after then President Joe Biden signed a law to ban TikTok unless it was sold. But Trump, who likes TikTok now, despite trying to ban the app himself during his first term, has punted on the plan four separate times. And that’s the news. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, salute Harry Styles on breaking a three-hour marathon in Berlin, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how the singer ran under a pseudonym and managed to run a 25913 marathon despite unusually hot weather, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and if you are listening to the show Harry Styles, what’s your training plan? Are you running, rolling 400s? What’s your long run strategy? How are you feeling? Do you like gels? Are you an applesauce guy? You seem like an applesausce guy. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Fohr. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Megan Larsen, Gina Pollack, and Jonah Eatman. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

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