Rosie O’Donnell SLAMS RFK Jr. Amid Backlash For His Autism Comments

Rosie O’Donnell is calling out Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his baseless claims about people with autism. On Wednesday, April 16, the Health and Human Services Secretary held a press conference discussing a CDC study that found 1 in 31 children in the country had been diagnosed with autism by age 8 in 2022. He then went on to claim that autism “destroys families” before falsely declaring that people on the spectrum cannot do certain things like “play baseball.” “More importantly, it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These are children who should not be suffering like this,” he said, adding, “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.” O’Donnell, who revealed she moved to Ireland following Donald Trump’s second election win, slammed the HHS secretary’s remarks in an Instagram post. “Robert Kennedy u should be ashamed of urself #autismawarenessmonth,” she wrote as she uploaded a photo of herself with her child Clay, who is on the spectrum. Meanwhile, actress Holly Robinson Peete replied to a clip of the moment from Kennedy’s speech on X, writing, “My 27-year-old son with autism didn’t ‘destroy our family’—he gave us purpose and unity… oh, and he pays taxes.” Though autism rates have risen in the past few decades, many medical professionals attribute it to the advancements in testing, a belief that the HHS secretary, who holds no medical or public health degrees, does not appear to share.

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