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Trump said kids get 80 vaccines. The real number isn’t close

Poynter · Grace Abels · last updated

President Donald Trump repeatedly exaggerated the number of vaccines recommended for small children, comparing it with vaccinating a horse.

“They give — I mean, for a little baby to be injected with that much fluid?” Trump first said Sept. 21 during an Air Force One press gaggle. “Even beyond the actual ingredients, they have sometimes 80 different vaccines … It’s like you’re shooting up a horse.”

He used the number four more times during a Sept. 22 press conference in which he also pushed an unproven link between autism and Tylenol.

“You have a little child, little fragile child, that you get a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess, 80 different blends, and they pump it in,” he said.

Then again: “It’s like 80 different vaccines and beyond vaccines and 80. Then you give that to a little kid.”

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