On War Room, RFK Jr. ally claims “there’s no doubt that vaccines cause autism”

Written by Helena Hind

Published

An ally of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed, “There's no doubt that vaccines cause autism,” on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast following news that the CDC had quietly updated its website with several statements that cast doubt on vaccine safety, including an assertion that “studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”

The person who formerly led the agency’s center responsible for respiratory viruses and immunizations called out “the weaponization of the CDC voice by validating false claims"; indeed, numerous studies spanning decades of research have repeatedly debunked the supposed links between autism and vaccines.

Mary Holland is the CEO of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit founded by Kennedy, and reportedly worked closely with Kennedy while he was head of CHD. Since Kennedy joined the Trump administration, Holland has consistently praised his autism and vaccine-related actions at HHS. Holland joined Bannon on Thursday to celebrate the CDC’s overnight reversal on vaccines and claim that “about eighty percent of the cases of autism are likely from vaccines.”

From the November 20, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Mary Holland, it's air pollution. Easily refuted, ma'am. Your thoughts.

MARY HOLLAND (GUEST): This is such a — you know, it's a great, great clip of sort of what the mainstream is going to try to do. So, literally, for thirty years, literally hundreds of thousands of parents around the world have been reporting that their children drastically regress developmentally immediately after vaccines. And for, you know, thirty years, parents have been gaslit because of pressure from pharma and the government, because they've been pushing these shots and they're very lucrative. And, so, it is so wonderful that we now see the start of HHS and CDC telling the truth. 

And, so, they haven't said, Steve, vaccines cause autism. They obviously think they need to have more science behind that to be able to say that. But what they are saying is that there's no science behind the claim 'vaccines do not cause autism' that the CDC's been making for decades and that they are now doing rigorous investigation of what are the causes of autism and that there are plausible biological mechanisms by which vaccines might be causing autism. 

Between you and me, there's no doubt that vaccines cause autism, and we believe some of the recent studies show that about eighty percent of the cases of autism are likely from vaccines. That's not accepted yet, but that's what most of the recent study that we think is really valuable is showing.

Former CDC leaders have condemned the agency’s revisions, per The Washington Post: 

The revisions show that the “CDC cannot currently be trusted as a scientific voice,” said Demetre Daskalakis, who formerly led the agency’s center responsible for respiratory viruses and immunizations. He was one of three senior leaders who resigned in August because of what they said was the politicization of science at the agency. “The weaponization of the CDC voice by validating false claims on official websites confirms what we have been saying,” he said.

…

“My question is how language that misrepresents decades of research ended up on a CDC website,” said Debra Houry, the CDC’s former chief medical officer who also resigned in August. “Public health communication must be accurate, evidence-based and free from political distortion. Anything less erodes trust and puts lives at risk.”

And numerous studies spanning decades of research have repeatedly examined and subsequently debunked the supposed links between autism and vaccines. As Matthew Herper wrote for STAT: “Scientists have responded to each of these arguments with many separate studies that both examined the mechanisms by which vaccines could allegedly cause autism and the broader question of whether children were more likely to develop autism if they had received vaccines. Again and again, the answer has been that they don’t.”

A statement from the Autism Science Foundation reaffirmed the evidence: 

The science is clear that vaccines do not cause autism. No environmental factor has been better studied as a potential cause of autism than vaccines. This includes vaccine ingredients as well as the body’s response to vaccines. All this research has determined that there is no link between autism and vaccines. This is consistent across multiple studies, repeated in different countries around the world, with different individuals, at different ages including infancy, and using different model systems.