In a recent segment of his show “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” comedian John Oliver cited FactCheck.org to debunk independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s false and misleading claims about autism and vaccination.
On his Aug. 4 show, Oliver played a clip of Kennedy appearing on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast in 2023, with Kennedy saying: “I bet that you’ve never met anybody with full-blown autism your age. You know, head banging, football or helmet on, non-toilet-trained, nonverbal. I mean, I’ve never met anybody like that my age. But in my kids’ age now one in every 34 kids has autism and half of those are full-blown, meaning that description.”
Oliver then listed reasons why Kennedy is wrong.
“I could talk about the fact that autistic people were long misunderstood and institutionalized. I could also throw in that there is definitely no such diagnosis as full-blown autism,” Oliver said, while showing FactCheck.org’s article “What RFK Jr. Gets Wrong About Autism,” which was written by staff writer Kate Yandell.
The article was part of a three-part series on RFK that also addressed the candidate’s false claims about COVID-19 and vaccines more broadly.
FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. You can read their coverage of this week’s Democratic National Convention here.
