Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins took a Military.com reporter to task Tuesday for “scaring veterans” with an inaccurate story about the Department of Government Efficiency’s work at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
The reporter, Patricia Kime, published this story on February 5 about “DOGE representatives” allegedly working inside the VA to access operations and information technology computer systems.
“Rumors began circulating Tuesday that DOGE representatives visited the VA on Tuesday with an intent to mine data on disability compensation and benefits,” Kime reported last month.
“When you start headlines with ‘there’s a rumor going around,’ and ‘we’ve heard that,’ that hurts my veterans,” Collins told Kime. “That scares my veterans. That scares my employees because it’s not true. Would you commit to not doing that in the future?”
“Well, there was a DOGE representative at the VA,” Kime replied defensively, although her story had indicated that more than one DOGE representative had visited the VA’s headquarters in Washington DC.
Collins pointed out that the DOGE rep is a VA employee and that his office had already confirmed this to her, so it was not a “rumor.”
“I have a VA employee who is our DOGE liaison. You knew that, and you could ask that question,” Collins said. “I need you to commit to not starting off, ‘Rumors began circulating …’ It’s either true or false, Patricia.”
Collins went on to chastise the reporter for parroting Democrat hyperbole, calling their rumor-mongering “unconfirmed hearsay.”
“And then you go to [Senator] Patty Murray [D-Wash.] saying that we’ve heard and ‘DOGE may have barged into the VA today’—unconfirmed hearsay,” he said, before noting that if he had said anything like that when he was a Republican member of Congress, she would have stressed that it was an “unconfirmed report.”
The Military.com story also quoted Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee despite his shameful history of lying about serving in Vietnam.
“Veterans risked their lives to defend this country, and they deserve more than to have unaccountable billionaires playing with the benefits they earned and rely on,” Blumenthal was quoted as saying.
Collins called out Kime for her one-sided reporting.
“So Patricia, I wanna work together with you, but I need you to commit to me that you’re not gonna do this,” Collins said.
“That’s fair, I’m working on it, and I have, I have been—oh actually I have another question based on that. Thank you very much,” she said.
But Collins refused to move on with the interview until she promised to quit scaring veterans with unconfirmed rumors.
“No, I want to hear the answer first. Are you committing not to do rumors,” he asked, ” because you’re scaring my VA employees about this and you’re scaring my veterans.”
Kime again said “that’s fair,” and noted that “a rumor is different than if I have a source.”
“Then you source it to our PR people and let them know, because you know something, I’ve got people who are reporting stuff right now who aren’t even calling us,” Collins complained. “They don’t even call us to check it.”
“Well, that’s not right,” said Kime.
“Well, this isn’t right either,” Collins shot back, referring to the reporter’s Feb 5 story that was based on rumors.
“OK. Well, that’s fair, but I did call about that. I did call,” she replied defensively.
“And you got the answer, but yet you still reported it as a rumor. Which is it? Is it a rumor or did you get it confirmed?” Collins demanded.
Kime insisted that “there is a DOGE person there. There is,” which Collins again noted was never a question.
“Nobody hid that from you. Nobody. We answered it, but it was reported as a rumor,” he said.
“I take issue with you parsing out my stuff,” Kime mumbled.
The VA Sec. also took issue with the headline of the story.
“I didn’t write that,” Kime said in her defense.
“I don’t care who wrote it, it’s your byline,” Collins shot back. “Think about what it says here: ‘Elon Musk aide is now working at VA accessing computer systems’—Ooohhh!”
“That’s a true statement,” Kime insisted.
“‘A DOGE employee,’ which is funny because they’re VA employees, a liaison,” Collins corrected her.
“I was not told that. It was a DOGE employee, one DOGE employee,” Kime insisted.
Collins then addressed the story’s headline which alleged that a DOGE employee was “accessing computer systems,” and argued it had unnecessarily scared veterans.
“I want to work with you a lot as we go forward. We have a lot of time together,” he said. “But I’m not gonna have any reporter scaring my employees and scaring the veterans, and that’s what this is doing. Let’s get it right. I’m the most transparent VA secretary we’ve had yet. I’m on video, I’m on interviews, I do everything I possibly can To push back against everything I’m hearing. We got a team that will help you, but I need your to help me too, OK?”
My advice to Ms. Kime: Quit Digging, the Hole Only Gets Deeper."