The Funniest Tweets From Baseball Fans Roasting RFK Jr.’s Autism Comments
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says that kids with autism will never play baseball, to which everyone who has ever actually played baseball responded, “Swing and a miss.”
As part of the Trump Administration’s anti-science and anti-vaccination agenda, RFK Jr., who has no medical degree and whose nomination to his current cabinet position came against the urging of 75 Nobel Laureates, has taken it upon himself to “Make America Healthy Again” by single-handedly stopping the “autism epidemic” as he sees it. The myth that vaccines cause autism is the cornerstone of the anti-vax movement that Kennedy champions, and, in case the clinically disproven lie wasn’t enough bullshit to hold in one worm-eaten brain, Kennedy is now pushing the preposterous narrative that autism precludes people from holding jobs, going on dates or playing baseball, a sport that’s one space below train spotting on the unofficial power rankings of autism-friendly hobbies.
Earlier this week, Kennedy spoke at a news conference and declared that autism “destroys families,” and “destroys our greatest resource, which is our children,” then making the ableist and hilariously false claim that children with autism “will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date.”
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That hateful and demonstrably false statement is going to look even sillier if a Cy Young winner ever publishes a book of poetry.
While so many shitposting baseball-lovers bombarded every clip and quote of Kennedy’s comments with clips and quotes of their own favorite pitcher speaking about their meticulous, 10-minute-long pregame routine, many, many more parents of children with autism and people with autism themselves provided their own personal examples of how autism hasn’t stopped them from doing any one of the activities that Kennedy mentioned. Videos of children with autism hitting home runs in Little League now litter the replies of every Twitter post about Kennedy’s hateful rant.
Despite the dramatic and fully eugenicist diatribe from our HHS secretary, autism isn’t a death sentence, and there are millions of Americans living perfectly well-adjusted lives on the autism spectrum while paying taxes, holding jobs, going on dates and, unlike RFK Jr. apparently, playing baseball. Hell, one of the most popular dating shows on streaming right now specifically covers people with ASD going on dates. Who’s to say none of the Love on the Spectrum stars can throw a wicked slider?