Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Attempts to Backtrack His Autism Claims After Facing Severe Backlash

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went on Fox News to try to backtrack the debunked claims he made about autistic people during his first official press briefing as health secretary.

RFK Jr. faced some serious pushback after he made several false claims about the disorder.

"Autism destroys families, and more importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like this," he said on Thursday, April 18. "These are kids who will never pay taxes. They'll never hold a job. They'll never play baseball. They'll never write a poem. They'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted."

Fox News host Sean Hannity had Kennedy on his show to help backtrack and clarify what the conspiracy theorist meant by his comments about autistic people.

"You actually got emotional yesterday while talking about children suffering from [autism]," Hannity told RFK Jr. "You said they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never pay taxes… people mistook that. Then you said they’ll never play baseball… they’ll never go out on a date, they’ll never be able to live unassisted lives."

Kennedy tried to explain that he was only referring to those who are "nonverbal," meaning they struggle to communicate through speech.

"Let me say this," he told the TV host. "There are many kids with autism who are doing well. They’re holding down jobs, they’re getting paychecks, they’re living independently. But I was referring specifically to that 25 percent — the group that is nonverbal."

"That was clear," Hannity replied.

Experts say the surge in autism diagnoses is largely the result of better awareness and wider screening. However, Kennedy claims this explanation is a "myth" pushed by the media to downplay an ongoing "epidemic."

“A larger point is that the media has bought into this industry part of this mythology that you see more autism because we are noticing it more, we are better at recognizing it, or there has been changing diagnostic criteria,” he said during his interview. “There is study after study and there is scientific literature going back decades that says that is not true.”

He referred to a 2013 study in an attempt to back up his views.

"In fact, California legislature in 2013 asked the MIND Institute at UC Davis to look exactly at that topic — is it real or are we just noticing it more? The MIND Institute came back and said, ‘Absolutely, this is a real epidemic, this is something we have never seen before,'" he continued. "Anybody with common sense, Sean, would notice that because the autism, this epidemic is only happening in our children. It’s not happening in people our age."