Just a week after out journalist Rachel Maddow called out the Trump family for cozying up with extremists during the ReAwaken America "roadshow" that would be stopping at the Trump National Doral Miami hotel - with Donald Trump's son Eric Trump even threatening to sue Maddow - one of the speakers in the group was caught telling the audience that vaccines turn people transgender.
Internist Dr. Peter McCullough developed a name for himself during the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming a well-known figure on the right spreading misinformation. He recommended fake treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, told the Texas Senate that there is no evidence of asymptomatic COVID-19, and called the COVID-19 vaccines "dangerous."
No, they weren't bitten by a radioactive spider (or a transgender person).
Now he has decided to get wackier, discussing "hypervaccination" on the ReAwaken America tour.
"It must be something happening to the children, something in the air or in the water or the food," he said, discussing autism at the Doral event. "One theory is that it's hypervaccination from an accelerating childhood vaccine schedule."
McCullough discussed autism and said that it leads to being transgender.
"Autism now is critically linked, as these children are coming forward in large numbers, to transgenderism," he said. "Yes. The two are linked."
"So do an inventory of what you have. Do an inventory of your family and your friends. Gather together and understand: this mental contagion is infectious and it's spreading and we've seen the chapters now: COVID the illness, COVID vaccination, a wave of autism that's just burning us, and now transgenderism. These are absolutely on the move right in front of us and it's distorting us, it's tearing us apart."
He called for all of the COVID-19 vaccines to be pulled from the market.
The ReAwaken America tour, co-founded by former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, stopped at Doral over the weekend.
Last week, Maddow pointed out on her MSNBC show that a number of people who held high positions in the Trump administration would be speaking at the event, including Flynn, former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, former Trade Director Peter Navarro, former chief of staff to Acting Defense Secretary Kash Patel, and former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who was chair of the House Intelligence Committee, as well as Eric Trump and his wife Lara Trump.
She then mentioned Scott McKay, who declared that "Hitler was fighting the same people that we're trying to take down today" and that Jewish people were responsible for every presidential assassination, as well as 9/11, and Charlie Ward, a Holocaust denier who has said the COVID-19 vaccines killed more people than the Holocaust. Both were scheduled to speak at the event.
Maddow said that Eric Trump has been traveling around the country "doing versions of this roadshow with these rabid antisemites."
Eric Trump responded by saying that his family is "the most pro-Israel family in American political history" and threatened to sue Maddow.
While more people have been diagnosed with autism in the U.S. recently - the CDC noted that the rate had tripled from 2000 to 2016 - the increase occurred well before the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent development of COVID-19 vaccines.