Washington Monthly writer Bill Scher said conservatives used to despise Democrats when they “picked winners and losers.” But now their U.S. president is doing it.
“Taking Tylenol is not good. I’ll say it,” President Donald Trump announced at a Monday press conference (perhaps unwittingly courting a lawsuit), according to Scher. “Don’t take Tylenol.”
“When Democrats made arguments for environmental or health regulations based on rigorous science, Republicans went to enormous lengths to challenge the science and resist government action,” said Scher. “But now we’re living in the upside-down. Republicans apparently believe that the President of the United States and the Secretary of Health and Human Services should use the power of their offices to kneecap individual companies based on science that’s half-baked at best.”
“Republicans have filed for divorce with the free market, in favor of a threesome with authoritarianism and quackery,” said Scher, citing President Donald Trump directing the federal government to “tar” Tylenol as the cause of autism and initially driving Tylenol’s stock price to a record low.
And he’s doing it because he appears to believe "the survival of his MAGA coalition requires accommodating all of America’s strains of conspiracy theorists, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.," Scher said. Trump also loves declaring he’s done something, even if that means pretending to declare victory over autism.
Trump and Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services are seizing upon a recent scientific review into the effects of acetaminophen use by pregnant women, where slightly more than half of the studies reviewed showed a connection between acetaminophen use and risk of autism in offspring.
But the lead researcher told The Washington Post that “acetaminophen is associated with a higher risk, but not causing it. Those are very different things.” Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, told CNN on Tuesday that Tylenol usage during pregnancy has actually gone down over the last few decades, while autism rates have gone up.
“Far more study is needed to prove causation, but waiting doesn’t serve Trump’s ribbon-cutting impulses,” Scher said.
“Republicans of the past — the very recent past — routinely slammed Democrats for ‘picking winners and losers’ when pursuing government subsidies, tax incentives, or regulations designed to promote renewable energy,” said Scher. “But Democrats were driven by an overwhelming scientific consensus that the world needs to slash carbon emissions, and government action was needed so low-carbon and zero-carbon energy sources could compete with long-standing (and often, government-supported) fossil fuel industries.”
Scher said if Republicans truly want to adhere to their principles they would also have to apply them to the health care industry, including when a Republican controls the White House.
“If there are any principled conservative Republicans left, here’s your chance to prove it,” wrote Scher.
Read the Washington Monthly report at this link.