Donald Trump is a racist and a sexist who never fails to take the low road at any opportunity. His personal attacks and shouted bits of nationalist rhetoric are almost enough to make anyone forget that he’s also an anti-science loon. And while his rants in that area usually target climate change (a well-known Chinese hoax perpetrated on America to gain a manufacturing advantage, he claims), that’s far from the limit of Trump’s war on facts.
Donald Trump is also an anti-vaxxer.
Donald Trump has not only spread dangerous misinformation about the links between vaccines and autism, but he’s also given money to the anti-vaxxer cause.
If you’ve been wondering just who the Donald J. Trump Foundation does cut a check for when it’s not paying off Donald J. Trump’s bills or buying football helmets for Donald J. Trump or paying for giant ego-boasting portraits of Donald J. Trump, here’s your answer.
His monetary support for the conspiracy theory came in the form of a $10,000 check to an anti-vaccine charity run by former Playboy model and television host Jenny McCarthy.
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What a surprise. When Trump decided to give some money, it was to a former model and TV host. The problem, of course, is that McCarthy’s charity is anything but charitable. It spreads a thoroughly-debunked doctrine of imaginary harm caused by vaccines. Equally awful, it caters to a pretend system of “alternative vaccination physicians” that put children at risk of very real, and very harmful, infections.
And don’t think Donald Trump paid McCarthy just because she’s blond (though that does seem to be a habit when it comes to checks from Trump’s foundation). Trump totally believes in vaccines … right until he doesn’t.
“Autism has become an epidemic… I am totally in favor of vaccines. But I want smaller doses over a longer period of time,” Trump said, before rambling on about a child who “went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.”
Trump’s vaccine beliefs may seem inconsistent and insensible. But then, neither sense nor science is required on the alt-right.
Ultimately, Trump’s vaccination campaign gives insight into the kooky alternate reality that the Republican nominee lives in, inhabited by outlandish claims and outright lies: from his remarks this week that Google is conspiring to bury negative Hillary Clinton stories, to his belief that thousands of U.S. Muslims cheered on the terror attacks of 9/11, to the Obama “birther” conspiracy—the list goes on and on.
As important as it is to think about what Donald Trump might do if he had control of the United States military, and what he might do to the Supreme Court, take a moment to think about what a Trump administration might inflict on the National Institutes of Health.
Trump’s crusade on vaccines puts children at risk. Trump was not only willing to trumpet this dangerous misinformation—he gave money to advance it.