Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Doug Collins confronted Military.com reporter Patricia Kime Tuesday over her alleged “innuendo and rumor stories” about employees in his agency.
The VA secretary ridiculed Kime’s report from February titled, “Elon Musk Aide Is Now Working at VA and Accessing Its Computer System,” which cited unconfirmed rumors that representatives from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are accessing the agency’s computer systems. Collins yanked out the article, read from it and asked her to commit to no longer writing untrue stories that scare and hurt his employees.
“One of the issues that we’re having, and I have it here, I need your help on something,” Collins said. “I need your help because all I seem to be doing lately is fighting back against innuendo and rumor stories. And this is what I seem to be fighting about all the time. In fact, Patricia, part of it is with you, and I just need your help because when you start headlines with ‘There’s a rumor going around’ and that ‘we’ve heard that,’ that hurts my veterans, that scares my veterans. That scares my employees. Will you commit to not doing that in the future? … I have a VA employee who is our DOGE liaison. You knew that, and could ask that question.”
“I did ask that question,” Kime said.