Listen: Austin Erickson talks with Leland Vittert about his autobiography "Born Lucky".
UNITED STATES – You may know Leland Vittert for his work at Fox News for a decade or now as the anchor of “On Balance” on NewsNation, but you probably don’t know what he went through to get to where he is now.
His book, “Born Lucky: A Dedicated Father, A Grateful Son and My Journey with Autism” shares the journalist’s struggles as a child in St. Louis and how his father helped him to become the man he is today.
At birth, Vittert’s umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and was knotted twice. If his mother hadn’t delivered him by caesarean section, he could have died. The doctor delivering Vittert nicknamed him Lucky.
In an interview with Flag Family News, Vittert called his autobiography a message of hope.
“This is a story for every parent who has a kid who is struggling. Not just with Autism, but with ADHD [Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder], anxiety and bullying in school,” Vittert explained.
“It’s not really my story that’s inspiring, but it’s the idea that parents can make such a remarkable difference in their kid’s life if they’re just told they can.”
When he was five-years-old in the 1980s, Vittert’s parents, Mark and Carol, took him to a psychology testing center. A few hours later, they were told it’s very difficult to figure out what’s in their son’s head.
On one half of his IQ test, Vittert was considered a genius. The other half showed he was mentally challenged.
There was a 68 point spread between the two. A learning disability is considered a 20-point spread.
Vittert said it was the biggest different psychologists who tested him had seen and if they measured his EQ, his emotional intelligence, it would have come back “freezing”.
Vittert’s father asked the psychologist who administered the test if there’s anything he and his wife could do for their son.
“Generally not,” she replied.
“My dad felt hopeless and this book is to give hope to parent who has a struggling kid and that’s the hope that my parents didn’t have that through my story,” Vittert explained.
Mark Vittert founded the St. Louis Business Journal and College Marketing & Research Corp. He sold the company to Playboy Enterprises Inc. for $1.5 million in 1971. That’s $12.1 million in 2025 money. He became his son’s life coach by training him to learn how to be social and to motivate him.
“There were two things that I could control, that anybody could control: number one is your character,” said Vittert. “In ‘Born Lucky’ we talk about why that was so important to my father who had lost his father young and how you define a man.”
“And, two, your work ethic. At a very young age, he started trying to figure out how to give me self esteem not by talking about it, or telling me how wonderful I was, but by having me earn it,”
Vittert learned how to work hard by doing 200 pushups a day for five days a week for months.
Vittert was asked if he feels claims by President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Junior about the causes for Autism Spectrum Disorder are the right messages to give, despite being refuted by the medical community.
Vittert explains he’s not a doctor or a scientist “and has the chemistry grades to prove that.”
“I won’t get into Tylenol dosing,” said Vittert. “What I will say is the fact that we are now talking about this as the scientific question of our day is so important.”
“When I was diagnosed, it was one in 1,000… Maybe higher. One in 1,500. Now it’s one in 31. Three times that for boys. Higher in poorer and minority communities. I’m less interested in the messenger, as imperfect as they may be, than I am in finding the answer so that kids don’t have to go through what I did.”
