NEW: Trump Secretary Confronts Journalist Head-On, Slams Her For Reporting On Rumors

The Trump administration cabinet secretary for veterans affairs rattled a reporter during a recent interview when he pulled out a copy of her latest article on his department and called out her use of rumors and innuendo to insinuate that he’s putting former service members at risk.

Doug Collins, an Air Force veteran who served in Congress before being tapped by President Donald Trump to lead an office with nearly half a million government employees, lit into journalist Patricia Kime while speaking about U.S. Department of Government Efficiency activities within the VA. The freelance reporter had just filed a story with Military.com suggesting that DOGE employees had “barged” into the building and accessed sensitive client records.

Collins, 58, took umbrage with Kime’s characterization, causing her to shrink back from the criticism and admit he was making “fair” points about her reporting.

“I need your help, because all I seem to be doing lately is fighting back against innuendo and rumor stories… in fact, Patricia, part of it is with you,” he said during an on-camera interview highlighted by the Citizen Free Press. “When you start stories with ‘there’s a rumor going around’ and that ‘we’ve heard that’ — that hurts my veterans. That scares my veterans.”

A testy exchange followed where Kime initially defended her reporting based off a characterization by Democratic U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) who told her that a DOGE employee had muscled their way into the VA offices.

“Musk and his associates already have the personal financial information of every veteran receiving disability or education benefits because of their illegal data mining at the Department of Treasury. Will they now look at private health records of veterans? What else will they do that could put the health and safety of our veterans at risk?” Murray told Kime in her story.

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Kime’s second paragraph summarized the allegation.

“Rumors began circulating Tuesday that DOGE representatives visited the VA on Tuesday with an intent to mine data on disability compensation and benefits,” Kime wrote.

Going on, Collins reminded the reporter that his office confirmed the “DOGE liaison” is actually a VA employee who does not report to Musk but that the description was not included in her story.

“I need you to commit to not starting off ‘rumors began circulating,'” he challenged her. “It’s either true or false, Patricia.”

When he suggested Kime could have written about an alleged DOGE invasion as an “unconfirmed report,” she replied, “That’s fair,” and agreed to work fairly with Collins going forward.

“You got the answer, but yet you still reported it as a rumor,” the secretary added.

Despite DOGE’s popularity among the general public, establishment figures in Washington, D.C., have been ratcheting up the pressure on the Trump administration to scale back some of the cost-cutting measures implemented by Musk and his team. President Trump last week announced that he had directed the entrepreneur and austerity advisor to use a “scalpel” when trimming waste, fraud, and abuse, a sign that the high points of Musk’s shock-and-awe campaign may be left behind.