'Just Google it': Top Trump official mocked for repeating widely debunked 'lazy argument'

President Donald Trump holds a Cabinet meeting, Wednesday, April 30, 2025, in the Cabinet Room. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being criticized and mocked for his latest take on mass shootings, suggesting that video games and psychiatric medicines could be to blame, despite numerous studies that largely show otherwise.

The Secretary, an attorney with no medical training who is widely regarded as a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist, appeared to dismiss existing research on the potential effects of video games and psychiatric medications—studies that have found no link to mass shooting violence.

“Oh, there are many, many things that happened in the 1990s that could explain these” mass shootings, Kennedy claimed.

“One is the dependence on the psychiatric drugs, which is in our country, is unlike any other country in the world,” he alleged. Studies have shown that most teenaged mass shooters had not been prescribed psychiatric drugs.

Kennedy also said that “there could be connections with video games, with social media, a number of things, and we are looking at that at NIH.”

Video games, however, have been found not to have a causation effect on mass shootings.

Brady, the nonprofit working to prevent gun violence, responded to Kennedy, writing: “Access to guns is the problem. Not mental illness. Not SSRIs. Not video games. Not transgender communities. These are hateful and dangerously misguided distractions from the only real solution: gun reform.”

Secretary Kennedy, in his remarks, noted that “Switzerland has a comparable number of guns as we do, and the last mass shooting they had was 23 years ago. We’re having mass shootings every 23 hours.”

Kennedy’s claim about Switzerland’s gun ownership is questionable, but reports have shown a large number of Swiss residents rely on guns for hunting, sport, and prior military service.

He also declared that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now conducting studies “to look at the correlation and the connection, potential connection between over medicating our kids and this violence.”

Critics jumped on Kennedy’s remarks.

Journalist Jane Coaston mocked the Secretary, writing, “finally, we’re back at ‘video games did it,’ I love the 90s.”

“I am 28 years old,” wrote journalist Matthew Cardenas, “and have played games like Call of Duty, Halo and Gears of War since I was a teenager. Not once have the video games motivated me to commit a mass shooting. This is such a lazy argument.”

“This is no different than asking a random person why shootings occur,” observed Robert E. Kelly, a professor of political science. “He’s obviously not read any work on the issue. He’s just grasping Trump’s refusal to choose people w/ topical expertise is maddening.”

Former defense journalist Kevin Baron blasted Kennedy, urging him to “just Google it.”

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