Approaching a year into Donald Trump’s second stint in the White House, you’d think we’d be used to his (and his entourage’s) political theater. The outlandish claims, the finger-pointing, the headlines engineered to make us spit out our coffee. It’s all part of the show.
But every now and then, something lands differently — something so careless and cruel that it makes your jaw drop and your chest burn with anger. Earlier this year, one of those moments came from from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Standing at a press conference, Kennedy decided to reduce an entire demographic to a single, warped stereotype. Kids with autism, he declared, will “never pay taxes,” “hold a job,” or “play baseball,” and, in perhaps the most callous stroke, “many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”
His words weren’t just false, they were incredibly insulting. They erased the complexity, the capability and the possibility of a community that deserves to be seen in full color. They gave oxygen to the stigma that individuals with autism already fight against every day. And they ignored the fact that autism is a spectrum. While some people with autism need more support, many are living independent, dynamic, ambitious lives. Nobody embodies that reality more vividly than Adrienne Bunn.
