Bulwark Takes - RFK’s Deep Thoughts on...Circumcision?

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

Sam Stein and Will Sommer break down one of RFK Jr.’s strangest moments yet: suggesting during a Trump cabinet meeting that circumcision might cause autism. The pair unpack the pseudoscience behind RFK’s claim, the misuse of disputed Danish studies, and the way his comments echo the administration’s earlier Tylenol panic. 

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. But MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, guys, me, Sam Stein. I'm managing it at the bulwark. I am here with Will Summer, who is the author of False Flag. The reason Will's with us is because every other person on staff refused to talk about this topic that we're going to talk about. It was just too hot an issue, too uncomfortable a topic of conversation for anyone other than me and Will. I speak of RFK Junior's latest discourse around autism, this time that there may be a correlation between early circumcision. and autism. This was during a cabinet meeting today. I'm not going to be totally dismissive.

He's not, you know, he's not speaking completely out of his ass. There are some studies, but as usual, it's incredibly complicated, and he's distilling it into something that is wildly misleading. But, Will, let's play the video of it. And I don't know. Let's just talk about it after the fact. Let's roll the tape of RFK talking about circumcision at the cabinet meeting. There's two studies that show children.

who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism. It's highly likely because they're given Tylenol. So, you know, none of this is this positive, but all of it is stuff that we should be paying attention to. Doug Bergam sitting next to him, like, I don't know.

Did he say, I didn't miss that. Can we play that again? I want to see Bergen. No, no. He's just sort of looking at look. Let's this guy talking about. Yeah, I want to play it again. Let's play it again if we can. I want to actually look for the... There's two studies that show children who are circumcised. early have double the rate of autism. It's highly likely

because they're given Tylenol. You know, none of this is positive, but all of it is stuff that we should be paying attention to it. Oh, my God. Half of the cabinet members aren't looking at them. They're just like, stare straight ahead. Don't look, don't look. I'm going to go on a limb

and say that's the first time circumcision has been brought up in a cabinet meeting, unless I'm missing something. But what did you make of RFK just going for it? Well, you know, it is a lot to bring up in a cabinet meeting, as you said. I mean, it's kind of just, you know, it's the RFK war on Tylenol. I mean, clearly he made this promise that they were going to get to the bottom of autism by, I think, September.

They made the big announcement about women, pregnant women taking Tylenol. And now he's, I mean, it's sort of a part of this where, you know, the science on this is very mixed and we can get into it. But he's just like, you know, there it is. It's the circumcisions. That's what's causing autism. Yeah, I think that's what gets me a bit. And we will get into the science because, well, I'm not a scientist, but I did actually do a little research on this. But it's like the idea that the top health official in the country would just kind of riff out in a cabinet meeting about, like, very important things like childed autism and circumcision.

And then, of course, the qualifier, it's not dispositive. He said that twice, actually, about where the child is linked to autism. Well, if it's not dispositive, then don't say it. Like, just don't say it because people are going to look to you as a person of authority and the chief medical officer in the country, and they're going to take your lead. And if you're not 100% sure of what you're about to say, then you might as well just not say it or at least let someone with more credibility say it. But that's not how these people roll. So, you know, you get RFK saying things like this in front of a cab meeting and it's going to cause real harm. You know, it is funny.

You think about RFK and a lot of the sort of COVID people's grievances with the way the, the way, HHS since the CDC was run during the pandemic. And a lot of it was, you know, they would, well, Dr. Fauci told us to wear cloth masks, but really that wasn't so effective or that the vaccines would stop the spread and maybe they didn't. And then, but now, but these guys seem to sort of just shoot off whatever they want. And they're just like, I don't know. I could just be making.

I could be wrong, though. You know, who cares? Don't, don't snip your kid's dick and give them Tylenol. Like, let's just, you know, let's just, you know, not do that as opposed to, you know, wear cloth mask. It's a good point, Will. It's very interesting point. Thank you.

I come up the trenchant analysis. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, this is why we got you on whenever the topic is male circumcision. So what is the science? Okay, so look, I'm not going to pretend like I'm the authority here. But there was a Danish study that appears to be what RFK is referencing among the two studies. And it looked at whether rates of autism for kids who were circumcised was higher or more elevated.

And, you know, the methodology of that study was. sharply disputed, in part because it wasn't clear if they were looking at whether circumcision was responsible or pain in general was responsible because it's possible that, for instance, UTI, urinary tract infections were, you know, by their methodology related as well. In that study, there was a suggestion that perhaps it was the use of Tylenol that was related to autism, but they never made determinative links between that and autism. In fact, several studies since then to have question whether the study was accurate or not. But that's what we're going on.

It's like two random studies that are not dispositive, and RFK Jr. just jumps in and says, yeah, this could be it. I mean, it really does take you back to the initial Tylenol press conference that him and Trump held where they would say, well, you know, there's mixed science. Maybe let's hold off on doing Tylenol. And Trump would just say, stop taking Tylenol right now if you're pregnant. If you might become pregnant, don't do it. There's nothing else for it, but too bad.

I mean, the idea is, and, you know, the CDC, the HHS, the FDA, we expect these, I mean, this is like life for death decisions here. And you would expect them to really, if they're going to make a pronouncement, really sort of mull it over. But instead you have RFK kind of just spouting off, you know, whatever he wants. And in weird forums, too, right? I mean, if this circumcision thing is real, if RFK thinks it's real, let's do a press conference, let's issue some white papers or what have you. rather than, oh, you didn't hear about the circumcision thing? Maybe you should have been watching the Trump cabinet meeting. Exactly.

It's the cabinet meeting where Donald Trump pontificates alongside RFK. The other thing that's notable is so that was just a snippet of what we played, no pun intended, by RFK in the cabinet meeting. Earlier in the same meeting, he was talking about Cuba and autism rates on the island. And I did notice something. He was like, well, you know, the rates of autism in Cuba are much lower, lowest in the world. And they have much less use of Tylenol in Cuba than anywhere else in the world. Therefore, these two muffings must be correlated. And I remember Trump actually, this is, you know,

this is different than what Trump said. Trump said there was no autism at all in Cuba. He was definitive zero autism at all in Cuba. So, you know, there's just not real much consistency there. The other thing that RFK complained about was that there's apparently some viral video of some Columbia professor or something like that, like pregnant, eight months pregnant, just like downing Thailand and all. Oh, yeah, can we talk about that, by the way? Can we talk about that? Yeah, what is that? So, I was shocked when I heard it, but is it real?

This is the world I live in. So, right. So after the press conference in September saying, you know, pregnant women stop taking Tylenol, then you would have videos of pregnant women saying, you know, F-U-R-F-K and taking a Tylenol because they were in pain. Or in some cases, I think it's kind of like the Tide Pod Challenge. I think people were, they would take the bottle and go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't think people were really eating all of these Tylenols. But then Republicans acted like it was totally real.

And they would say, oh, my God, these liberal women, they're on a death mission just to spite Trump. Trump's arrangement. There is this one that got like a ton of attention where one of the women who was very opposed to what pregnant women taking Tylenol said, I just got a call from a man whose wife guzzled a whole thing of Tylenol to spite Trump. And now they're in the ER and that, da, da, da, and it's like, why would you what? like, okay, my wife's in the ER because of this TikTok stock gone wrong. Now let me find this MAGA person on Twitter and give her a call. I mean, people are saying, wow, liberals are truly sick. Yeah.

Well, it did seem a little bit too ridiculous to be true, honestly, that someone would just be on the street, videoing themselves, being like, gah! Can I also, just jump off the Cuba thing? We're seeing a lot of sort of an abandonment of what we might call empirical evidence in favor of like, I heard it from someone, or there's a lot of focus on societies where I think it's fair to say the detection may not be so good. You know, I think in Cuba, I'm not an expert on autism in Cuba, but I think it's fair to say

that they probably don't have the most rigorous testing. And also, I think there's an incentive to not be, you know, because it's a government health care system, to not be maybe mass identifying everyone with autism because that would mean more money has to be spent. This recalls in the September press conference when Trump said the Amish have no rates of autism. And that, where did that come from? An Amish guy who was on the Theo Vaughn show and says, we don't know what ADHD is. Now, this guy was not really a medical expert in any way, but this is how our medical policy is getting shaped.

I will just note that Cuban doctors have come forward since then to refute the idea that there is no autism on the island. So there is autism on the island. Yeah, it's just the world we live in. And on the issue of circumcision, the other thing to note is, like, kids aren't often given to time, though, post-circumcision. It's true. There's doctors in my feed being like, this just doesn't comport with reality. But this is our reality. So, yeah, we got to watch these cabinet meetings for big scientific breakthroughs from RFK Jr.

Well, thank you for... He is in the lab. He's like, I've emerged. Yeah, seriously, it's unbelievable. Thank you, buddy. I appreciate this. It wasn't that bad talking for, what, 11? minutes about circumcision was it it reminds me of when we worked together at a previous publication and

andrew yang came out against circumcision oh my god and related every he said you know my first kid was circumcised second kid wasn't and it was like whoa okay all right i forgot about that yang that's a good recall why do he he like ran on a weirdly anti-circumcision someone someone on twitter or redid asked what's your take on circumcision he said well let me tell yeah i remember that and then i called him up and we talked about it. It's so funny. Those are the good old days. All right, man, take care, buddy. Thank you guys for watching this. I'm sure this was illuminating. Please do not take your circumcision advice from us or from RFK Jr. Talk to your doctors. Subscribe to the feet.