On Thursday, Donald Trump held a truncated Cabinet meeting after he was over an hour late to the meeting. Despite the limited time, time was made for RFK Jr. to speak on Tylenol (acetaminophen) again. During that, he made this claim:
This morning before I came in here, somebody showed me a TikTok video of a pregnant woman, eight months pregnant, she is an associate professor at the Columbia Medical School and she is saying “F’ Trump” and gobbling Tylenol with her baby in her placenta. And the level of Trump Derangement Syndrome has now left political landscapes and it is now in the realm of pathology. And a mother could overwhelm millions of years of maternal instinct to put her baby at risk.
Surely, journalists would follow up to try to verify his claims about this supposed video? That doesn’t appear to have happened.
Looking around there is almost no mention of it. When it did get mentioned, it was almost always like this PBS coverage:
Kennedy noted during the meeting that he had seen a TikTok video on Thursday, which he said featured a pregnant woman “gobbling Tylenol” and cursing Trump. “The level of Trump derangement syndrome has now left the political landscape and now in the realm of pathology,” he said. Kennedy also said the woman was taking Tylenol “with a baby in her placenta.”
A fetus develops in the uterus, not the placenta. The placenta is a temporary organ that develops in the uterus during pregnancy and provides oxygen, nutrients, and hormones to the growing fetus.
The one attempt at that we found was from Matt Novak of Gizmdo,
It’s not entirely clear what TikTok video Kennedy was referring to, but the Russian propaganda account RT posted a video Sept. 23 showing a woman who was taking Tylenol while 28 weeks pregnant. The video became popular on TikTok, and RT claims the woman is a “teaching doctor at New York’s Columbia University,” though the TikTok account has been set to private, and Gizmodo could not confirm the person’s employment.
Why was “tech news blog” covering this? Perhaps it falls under the category of “internet culture,” which they cover.
He doesn’t mention reaching out to the department RFK Jr. runs, but it at least is an attempt to fact check RFK Jr.
Politifact also pointed the same video as what RFK Jr. was most likely referring to.
If that is the video, then RFK Jr. got almost every detail wrong. The woman in question is a fellow, not an associate professor. She is 7 months, not 8 months pregnant. She didn’t gobble Tylenol. And didn’t’ say anything at all about Donald Trump. And of course there wasn’t a baby in this woman’s placenta. The person that would come looking deranged from that isn’t the TikToker but RFK Jr.
If a member of Biden’s Cabinet or another President’s had said something like this it seems highly unlikely the press would have simply ignored it as has largely happened here.
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