Senate Candidacy for Person Who Hates Autistic People?

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in campaign politics.   In the 2016 campaign, a number of posts discussed Trump's  bad record on science and disability issues more generally.  A Trump cheerleader is considering a Senate race in California.

Sarah D. Wire at The Los Angeles Times:

Far-right radio host and author Michael Savage says that “very important people” have asked him to run for U.S. Senate in California.

“Some very important people have come to me and said ‘Savage, would you like to run as an independent for the U.S. Senate in the state of California against the esteemed Dianne Feinstein?’” Savage said on his show, “The Savage Nation,” Friday. “I’m asking you should I run or not run?”

Savage is infamous for his verbal attacks on people with autism.

On July 22, 2008, Jacques Steinberg reported at The New York Times:

Michael Savage, the incendiary radio host who last week characterized nearly every child with autism as “a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out,” said in a telephone interview on Monday that he stood by his remarks and had no intention of apologizing to those advocates and parents who have called for his firing over the matter.

“My main point remains true,” Mr. Savage, whose radio audience ranks in size behind only those of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, said in the interview. “It is an overdiagnosed medical condition. In my readings, there is no definitive medical diagnosis for autism.”

On the July 16 installment of his program, which is broadcast every weekday, Mr. Savage suggested that “99 percent of the cases” of autism were a result of lax parenting. He told his audience: “They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life.’ ” Among the other admonitions he felt children with autism should be hearing, he said, were: “ ‘Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’ ”