The Crushing Loneliness of Growing Up With Autism - Leland Vittert

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1:18Today we're sitting down with journalist, author, and a good friend of mine, Leland Vitter, to talk about his new book, Born Lucky. Leland opens up about his personal journey with autism, how his parents recognized the early signs and the profound impact of his father's unwavering support. This conversation hits on challenges, resilience, and the lessons we can learn from real adversity. Wow. You know, I didn't realize Leland had autism. He's done such a good job of managing the social cues, such a great job of understanding himself and getting comfortable in his own skin. And I tell you what, it was a beautiful love story and a beautiful tribute that he wrote about his dad, but you know what else it was?

2:00It was a great parent guide. How to think about your kids, how to love them unconditionally, how to be an actor. It's not your words that matter to your kids, as Leland points out in his book, but it's the incredible unconditional love of the actions and the unwavering support that his dad had for Leland that has made him a success today. So if you're facing challenges and you want to grow, dive into Leland's book. It's a great example of what human beings could do for each other when they really love each other. Let's go to the conversation.

2:34Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci, and joining us is a friend of mine, Leland Vedert. He is the chief Washington anchor for News Nation, but he's written an incredible book, which I predict will be a bestseller. The title of the book is Born Lucky, A Dedicated Father, A Grateful Son, and My Journey with Autism. Wow, what a title. I want to go to you for a second. We've known each other a long time. We worked together at Fox, and you've been gracious to me. I've been on your show both at Fox and News Nation. You've reported from War Zones, the White House. But in this book, you're sharing an incredible personal story about your very own childhood.

3:21We're going to get into all elements of it, but why? Why was now the time to tell us this story? Well, it was unbeknownst to us, Anthony, that so much was going to be focused on autism at this moment, right? With RFK and with the discussion of a cause and is there therapeutics and how to deal with children who have special needs, whether it be autism or ADHD or bullying or whatever it is. The why was simple, is that more and more kids are getting diagnosed. There's no discussion about the cost of diagnosing kids, right? There's no discussion about what does it mean when kids think that, hey, I'm different?

4:05What does it mean when teachers teach and treat kids differently? What about when kids treat kids differently? So we're at a reckoning in what parenting in America means. Is it gentle parenting where anyone who has issues is put in bubble wrap? Or are we going to once again realize that great things and great people come out of real adversity and persevering through adversity? So the idea behind the book, it's about me, really. It's my story, but it's not for me. It's for parents and to give parents hope, unlike what my parents had. My parents, when I was diagnosed, were completely hopeless and they felt helpless.

4:46This proves that there is real hope. Okay, so you do not express yourself today, 2025, as somebody that's autistic. but you do write about in the book that at the age of three, you were not speaking. Your dad, Mark, sells his company and decides to dedicate his life to, I guess, being a full-time coach is the way you describe it. So I want you to go to that part of the book. I want you to go to the origin story and how your parents are figuring out that you have autism and how do they help you deal with this in the modern world? It's a great question. And there were very clear signs that I was different.

5:31No kids would ever invite me to play dates. My parents would never see me playing with a kid. But there was this one moment, a show in the book, where we're at this dude ranch. It said, you know, families come for a week in Arizona or whatever. And it's a Saturday. everybody's there. There's the big field or lawn in front of the main house of the dude ranch, and everybody gets there. And I'm like five or six years old, and everybody starts playing. All the kids have a pickup soccer game. And everybody's laughing and having fun. And I'm sort of running into kids, and I'm hitting kids, and kids want nothing to do with me, and they push me down.

6:13And it's very clear to my dad, who's watching sort of with all the other dads, that I'm much more like a repellent effect of a magnet than the attraction part of the magnet, right? You put two magnets together, they either click or they kind of push apart. I was the push apart. And my dad looks at my mom and says, we got a real problem here. And he could just see that I could not interact with kids my own age. And he said, at that point, I realized, and he said to my mom, We've got a very rough, at the time, it was about 12 or 14 years ahead of us. So we write in the book, I show you in the book, how he takes that moment, understands that it's going to be bad, says to my mom, he goes, this is going to be really difficult, and then goes about trying to figure out what to do about it.

7:05there was a request by the school that I was at to have me evaluated because I had some of these very sort of peculiar issues. Couldn't interact with kids my own age, was, you know, kind of very angry and aggressive physically. But at the same time, I could interact with adults on a fairly normal basis. And so they take me to a psychology testing center. And you know what it's like, you know, the little waiting room with stale coffee and the vinyl chairs and everything else My parents are waiting for me. And then the psychologist comes out with me after the test. Results of the test are this, a lot of different issues.

7:43But one of them is on that IQ test, that's two halves of a test. On one half, I'm genius. On the other half, I'm mentally retarded. So a 20 point spread is a learning disability. My spread was 70 points. Parents get taken into the little conference room. They all sit down. We've all been in those little medical conference rooms. And the woman says to my dad, it's very difficult to know what's going on inside his head. She said, at the time, he has pervasive developmental disorder, social blindness. There are all these names for it that we now know to be autism. Back then, that's not how it was diagnosed.

8:21And my dad goes, is there anything we can do? And you know, the desperation of a parent who wants to help their child. And the woman goes, generally not. And he goes, anything, please, anything. And she said, well, if the kid is very smart, which in some ways I was, and if he wants it, you can work with him. But that was all she said. That was all my dad was given. And he said, okay. And at that point he decided, as you pointed out, sold his companies, he was very successful at the time. And he said, I knew you didn't have any friends, So I was going to become your friend. Never told a soul about the diagnosis.

9:02Never asked for a special accommodation. Never put any effort into getting me counseling or therapy or tutors or anything like that. He said, you know, no one else is going to care what's wrong with you. They're only going to care that you're weird or different or whatever. And I think you can be more. And if you're going to have a successful life, I have to adapt you to the world, not adapt the world to you.

9:27So, I mean, Leland, there are lots of increased cases of autism. A lot of people are trying to figure out the causes of autism. The FDA is now talking about potentially uses of Tylenol was one of the contributors. Your story is an unapologetic one, though. It's like, it's a deal with it story. You mentioned bubble wrap. Your dad is not a bubble wrapping sort of a person. No, it was not. Okay. So we have the problem. I'm going to deal with the problem and I'm going to help my son come out of the problem. But your own description, you're running over. So what is a distinct characteristic of autism?

10:14Because there's a scene in the book, which is very touching. Your dad is touching his watch to try to signal to you certain things. So what are the manifestations of the behavioral traits of autism and how did your dad help you develop the emotional cues that sometimes people that have autism don't develop intuitively? It's a great question. And one of the two major autism society, one of the two major autism groups, the Autism Society, Autism Speaks, has this saying that if you've met a kid with autism, you've met one kid with autism. And you point out rightly that it went from about one in a thousand or one in two thousand when I was a kid with diagnosed to now one in thirty six, three times higher among boys, even higher among minorities.

11:02And that number, relatively speaking, is increasing still. And nobody knows why. As you point out, there's been some reports about what may contribute to it, but no definitive studies. so what my dad realized at the time there was very little work but what manifested with me was that i was unable to get along in any way shape or form um example when i was in fifth grade and i write the story in the book my dad knows how much i'm struggling in school i write the book how he comes over to my fifth grade p.e class to to see me and he knew the p.e teacher from a football program or another school.

11:42It's a nice little school. PE fields are out back down this sort of hill, and you look down over the fields. And he says to the coach, he says, hey, how's my boy doing? And Jim Hoots goes, you know, he's doing better. I think today's a good day. And my dad goes, oh, that's great. Let's go see him. And the coach goes, I don't think that's a good idea. My dad goes, why not? Hoots goes, well, I had to put him with the girls. And that's where I have to do. I have to have him play with the girls all day because the boys are too mean to him. So I could not get along with someone my own age. Someone touched me.

12:21I thought they were trying to hit me. So I'd start a fight with them. I kind of looked funny, terribly cross-eyed. So sort of relentless bullying there and had no understanding of social interaction. So you asked the question and you can imagine how my dad's healing now with his fifth grader playing with the boys and my dad had been quite a gifted athlete. As a fifth grader, my dad says, okay, how do I teach Lucky how to interact with people? And one of the things he would do is we'd go to lunch. We're going to lunch with Mr. Scaramucci. Okay. So I love to talk to adults. I could talk to adults about adult things because my dad was my only friend.

13:01So I was a mini me. So I would start in before we even sat down asking you about your business or bugging you about politics or whatever it is. Why do you hate Trump so much, Anthony? And I've seen what you did with this and on and on and on. Mr. Scaramucci. And - You don't have enough time in this podcast for me to answer that question. I know, but we would at lunch and I would try it. And then about, and it would be specific questions. It'd be like, when you were in the West Bank, where was your office? Okay, what was your office look like? And it just was insensitive, insensitive. And he would tap his watch and that was my signal to stop talking, but also to bookmark the moment.

13:39So it wasn't embarrassing me, right? It wasn't being like, you know, little boy, be quiet or lucky, be quiet. It was tap his watch. I realized time to stop. And I would wait, you know, five, 10 minutes, whatever. And I'd start bugging you again with more questions. This would be a bad business. And then tap his watch again. And then afterwards, we'd almost go back through it like watching game film. And so he'd say, okay, so lucky when Mr. Scaramucci was talking about, you know, what he was doing this weekend and where he was traveling. Why did you think it was important to ask him right then about the White House?

14:14I don't know, dad. That's what I want to talk about. Right. But do you understand that that's what, you know, he and I were talking about this. It sounds small, but it was sort of teaching me the very basics of the human social interaction and becoming a student of it rather than it coming naturally as it does to someone like you. So that's the most fascinating part about it, because no one would know that you grew up like this if you're interacting. But do you find yourself now intuitively having these social cues, or do you find that you're living in a rules-based mind where you're hearing something, you're saying, okay, this is the appropriate thing you at this moment or not?

15:01It's a great question. And this may sound calculating on my part, but it's sort of the only way I can interact. I write at the end of the book, I will always have autism. And my dad points out for parents, whether your kid's autistic or has ADHD or anxiety, any of these issues or just problems growing up, right? Kids, we are people. This isn't a broken arm. You don't heal. So the book isn't a prescription or a cure, but I'll give you an example. A couple of weeks ago, I was at a golf course with my father-in-law and we were having to leave pretty quickly to go do something. And I was trying to pack my golf bag.

15:42And one of the characteristics for me for autism is sort of this intense focus on one task to the point of just tuning out everything else, no matter what is sort of socially required of you. And this gentleman we had played golf with came over to try to talk to me about something and actually about the book. And I completely ignored him. It was so rude. And I almost knew at the moment that I was doing it, like, I'm so focused on this task, I need to work on it. And I'm outside the golf club and he's trying to be very nice and talk to me. And I was just rude as the devil. And zipping up the bag into the point, he just walked off finally.

16:23And you could tell he was quite irritated. Rightfully so. And I thought to myself, Jesus Christ, you know, at 43 years old, you still cannot get these things right sometimes. So what I'd say to you is, you know, it is still a learning process for me. It's still a discipline. Now, of course, I sent the guy an apology text and really sorry and on and on. But it still stuck with me and was an example sort of every day that I have to keep those lessons that my dad taught me that we write about in the book top of mind.

16:57You know, normal people have this problem, though, too. I mean, normal people, but people that don't have autism, there's nobody normal. I don't mean it like that. But the thing that I love about the story is your personal resilience. You say something in the book as a dad and I have five children that really hit me right in my chest. You said that you had a crushing sense of invisibility as a child. And you were told by teachers and principals and others that you were weird. Or, you know, some kids think that you're weird. And then the principal's like, well, I also think he's weird. And you got to overcome all of this.

17:41So talk about that. Talk about how you go from that to being an internationally recognized news journals. Well, and congratulations, by the way. Thank you. Thank you. The real answer is my dad is the hero in this, right? And I think you'll understand this as being the father of five kids, that my parents in seventh grade, it's a private school that goes seventh through twelfth grade. So this was my chance at a fresh start, gets called in. My parents get called into the principal's office about three weeks in. And the principal's sitting there, you know, wooden desk, couple of chairs for the parents, little window looking out on the quad of the school, and says to my parents, look, I'm going to cut to the chase.

18:23Everybody here thinks Lucky is weird. Arrow number one through my parents' heart because they think that finally I've got a shot. And she follows up, and frankly, I do too. So my dad realized he wasn't going to get any help from the administration or from teachers or from, you know, the school. and he didn't you know he could have easily said well you know bucky is weird he's got you know these these issues called pervasive developmental disorder and at the time now it was starting to be known as asperger's and you need to do all these special things for him and on and on and on dad's common understanding and i think the the theme throughout the book you're talking about is that adversity needs to be embraced um that so many parents want to pave this really beautiful road for their kids, the easiest road they can.

19:10And what parent wants to see their kids struggle? And what dad knew was that if I didn't struggle, if I didn't face adversity, if I didn't face challenges, I wouldn't be able to face the real world. So 200 pushups a day, starting when I was about six years old, five days a week. But it taught me something, which was that every pushup was one closer, you know, one pushup closer to a goal, which was after three months, if I did all this, I got to go to Disney World. And that was sort of the basis of his standard for me of set goals, set hard goals, but achieve them and it'll teach you can do hard things.

19:47So, you know, you were asked or invited to leave the White House because you disagreed with Donald Trump on a certain few things. I was invited to leave Fox News for similar reasons. And I remember being, in my parents' bedroom, guest bedroom in Florida. I'd almost died of COVID. I'd gotten out of a relationship. I was just as low as you could be. And my dad said, look, he said, you've done this before. There was a teacher in eighth grade that looked at you in front of the whole class and said, if my dog was as ugly as you, I'd shave its ass and make it walk backwards. You got through that. You went to school the next day.

20:26You can get through this. And that's that standard and that pressure and that focus of my dad of making me get through hard things, even while he held my hand doing it, that served me very well.

20:45Advice for today. You know, we've got a lot of parents that have one in 36. You've got a lot of parents that have kids that have ADHD or they have Asperger's or they have a form of autism. what's the biggest lesson from your journey that we could apply to people that are dealing with their journey today? Well, this is different, right? Because it's a parenting book written by a kid and I don't have a kid yet. So I don't want to, you know, this isn't an advice or how to manual. But what I would say is my book is proof for parents, no matter what your child is dealing with, that there's hope. There's real hope that things get better.

21:29And that enormous amount of love, unyielding standards, holding your kid's hand through adversity, not taking the adversity away, can change their lives permanently and will. George Will wrote the forward of this. I had the unenviable task of having 240 pages between my dad's afterword, which I think is the best part of this, which was sort of his takeaways for parents and his thoughts, and George Will writing the forward. But the middle 240 pages were mine, and George Will ended his forward by saying, this is proof of the mountain moving power of parental love. and that to me is what really the one takeaway is.

22:17I love it. All right, so we're down to the five words of my show here, Leland. We call five words from your book and then we ask you to react to those words, okay? Okay. So you can give me a few sentences on each or elaborate as much as you want. I say the word journalism, you think of what? I think of the relentless pursuit of the truth. Without fear or favor. And it comes from my dad who, when I was a little boy, there weren't expectations. There were no expectations about either schoolwork or are you going to be a very successful business person as he was or any of that kind of stuff. But there were two expectations.

22:58One that you worked hard and more importantly, that you had good character. And one time I still remember, tell the story of the book, when he caught me lying, which is a big deal in my house. and he made me write I will tell the truth a thousand times out and that pursuit of the truth has sort of been what I was about when I was six seven eight years old and still am are we under threat the truth the journalists journalists under threat today I think the truth has always been under threat. More so today? I don't know about more so or less so. I think the bare knuckle parts of politics are now more apparent.

23:46It is no longer waged silently or politely. Look, I covered the Obama White House for Fox News. They were pretty rough too. They just did so more quietly. So I remember being the guy who was the morning reporter at the White House for Fox, and Josh Earnest and others, members of the cabinet, would always do a round robin with every other network. But they wouldn't go on Fox. It was always my job to walk upstairs and like, you know, from the lower, the little area down below it, under the briefing room where the broadcast booths are and say, you know, hi, Josh, I just need to lodge our complaint that Fox once again has been excluded.

24:30And he goes, oh, Leland, it's so good to see you. How's your weekend? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And it was all nice about it, but they were doing this. So I don't know. To me, the truth has always been under threat. It's why journalism was the only profession protected in the First Amendment. All right. You say the word resilience, you say what?

24:51Without it and without being taught it, right? It's a learned skill. It's not an innate quality. and without being taught it, I don't know how people succeed at anything. It is a necessary component, I think, not only to success, but to a happy life.

25:11Autism. I don't think we know what it means to everyone. I know what it means to me, which was that I didn't understand how to interact in the world and I'm still learning it. It meant for me crushing isolation. It meant for me humiliation by teachers and kids. It meant for me that, you know, for 12 years, my dad was not only my best friend, but my only friend. And it also meant to me now that I have the opportunity to help a lot of people.

25:55Leland Vedder. That's two words, Anthony. Yeah. All right. See that? Well, I'm improvising. Okay. So you want to know what I mean to myself? If you were describing yourself. Boy, I'm just glad that my wife isn't listening right now. I am Mark Vedder's son. And that's what this book is, a love letter to my father and a thank you to explain to him that I understand what he did and how much he sacrificed. and all of the nights that I would come home humiliated from school, like the time the teacher said he'd shave his dog's ass and make it block backwards, or the teacher who told me in seventh grade choir class, you know what, sing softly.