Robert F. Kennedy Jr has launched a forceful attack on the New York Times, accusing the paper of running a “hit piece” against him built on testimony from “disgruntled” former employees, several of whom he says he fired or who quit to avoid being fired.
The Health and Human Services Secretary’s broadside on X came in response to a New York Times article published earlier this week, written by correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg and headlined “Kennedy Shows Minimal Engagement With Vast Health Portfolio.” The piece questioned Kennedy’s management of the department, focusing in particular on his handling of the ongoing Ebola outbreak, which has exposed at least six Americans, and argued he had “shown little interest” in the day-to-day running of the organisation in favour of pursuing his own 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 article noted Kennedy had made only one known visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Atlanta headquarters — which came after a gunman opened fire there and killed a police officer — and described him as “deeply mistrustful” of career civil servants, surrounding himself instead with people who share his views while major posts remained vacant and experienced staff departed.
Kennedy rejected the article’s framing 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,” he wrote on X. “You had a preconceived thesis, and you set out to prove it.” He also pointed to changes he says have gone unreported, writing: “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. Nor did you cover the fact that my predecessor almost never showed up for work here during his four years in office.”
He went further in his criticism of the paper’s sourcing and standards more broadly. “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.”
A spokesperson for the New York Times told Fox News Digital that Kennedy had declined an interview request and had not responded to detailed questions put to him before 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,” the spokesperson said. “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.”
