Trump signs executive order recommending new childhood vaccine guidelines

President Trump signs a executive order on childhood vaccinations.

President Trump on Monday signed an executive order aimed at spacing out and reducing the schedule of vaccinations administered to American children in what the White House described as "gold standard childhood vaccination recommendations." Trump said it was "another historic step in our mission to make America healthy again."

Trump told reporters RFK Jr was the driving force behind that executive order and said he was "doing a fantastic job." The new guidelines aims to reduce the number of vaccinations recommended to 11 jabs for core diseases that Trump described as "the most serious and dangerous," down from as many as 72 shots some American children have been receiving in recent years. The president said the new guidelines would put the U.S. closer in line with vaccination recommendations in many European countries. 

Trump didn't say it explicitly, but suggested a possible link between rising numbers of vaccinations over the years with rising cases of autism in the U.S.

"Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today," the president said. "In those times, people were much healthier and, of course, the high rates of autism now observed did not exist. So, there's a reason for such epidemic rates of autism. And we're going to bring it back to much closer to where it was. While we do not know exactly what the cause is with respect to autism, it is essential to our research efforts that we have the very best vaccine recommendations in the entire world," Trump continued. "So we're reducing them, we're changing it to visits over the period of a year, a year-and-a-half, so they get 20% of what they would have gotten in one big shot."  

Key aspects of the order include spacing out the administration of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine into three individual shots, recommending that the hepatitis B vaccine should be given around the age of 14 or 15 rather than immediately after birth, and the removal of the COVID-19 vaccine and flu vaccines from being recommended for children.

Another aspect of the executive order is the recommendation to emphasize "parental choice over childhood vaccines by promoting State compliance with constitutional and Federal law related to parental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under the law, including States’ obligations to provide religious and medical exemptions from childhood and adolescent immunization requirement," the White House said.

Trump took questions from reporters in the Oval Office at the signing event, and was asked whether he's spoken with Attorney General Todd Blanche about whether to prosecute Anthony Fauci. The president said he hadn't. When asked about the text message released Monday from Anthony Fauci's government phone and whether he thinks the Biden administration withheld information from the American public on the COVID vaccine, Trump replied, "Well, the Biden administration was a disaster in every way. That would be just one way."

Below, watch Trump's remarks before he signed the executive order.