Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched an attack against The New York Times on Wednesday, accusing the paper of publishing a “hit piece” sourced by disgruntled former employees.
Kennedy’s post on X comes after a report claimed Kennedy was “checked out” from his position amid the latest Ebola outbreak in Africa. Kennedy rejected the narrative as “propagandist” journalism.
“In order to prove your preconceived case for my disengagement, you quote anonymous employees, some of whom I fired or who quit to avoid being fired,” Kennedy wrote Wednesday.
“You had a preconceived thesis, and you set out to prove it,” he later added.
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The article, published earlier this week by New York Times correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg, was titled “Kennedy Shows Minimal Engagement With Vast Health Portfolio.”
It questions Kennedy’s management of the department, focusing largely on his handling of the Ebola outbreak, which exposed at least six Americans. The article argues Kennedy has “shown little interest” in actually managing the major health organization and instead is focused on advancing his top priorities.
“Mr. Kennedy has shown little interest in managing the details of work in his department, according to multiple colleagues,” Stolberg wrote. “Instead, they say, he is single-mindedly focused on his top priorities, including food recommendations and pesticide exposures, and hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful.”
The piece added that Kennedy has made one known visit to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters. The visit to the Georgia facility came after a gunman opened fire at its headquarters and killed a police officer.
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It went on to call him “deeply mistrustful” of career civil officials and in turn has surrounded himself with people who support his views, adding, “While major posts have sat vacant and a wave of veteran health experts and scientists have departed, Mr. Kennedy has remained isolated from much of the department’s top staff.”
“When I took this job, the building was empty. About 90% of the employees were not coming to work. I changed that, but your newspaper never covers my reforms,” Kennedy wrote. “Nor did you cover the fact that my predecessor almost never showed up for work here during his four years in office.”
He also criticized them for citing multiple unnamed sources and ex-employees, adding, “Standards have devolved, and journalism is dead. The Times now employs propagandists,” he said. “The fact that you have minimal access to decision makers leaves you covering trivia and relying on your own capacity for invention.”
The New York Times responded to Kennedy’s criticism, saying he declined an interview and didn’t address the “detailed questions” prior to publication.
“The Times set out to examine Secretary Kennedy’s leadership and management style in light of numerous vacancies within the Department of Health and Human Services and concerns internally about his detachment from key issues and officials,” a spokesperson for the Times told Fox News Digital. “The secretary declined an interview request and did not address detailed questions before publication about his approach to running the department. This article is based on conversations with a dozen people who have worked directly with Mr. Kennedy during his tenure as secretary. We are confident in our reporting.”
