A medical expert recently sent the Los Angeles Times a blistering editorial condemning the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department -- and now he's claiming that the paper changed it to give it a pro-Trump spin.
Eric Reinhart, an anthropologist, psychoanalyst and psychiatry resident at Northwestern University, came out swinging after the paper ran what was supposed to have been his anti-RFK Jr. editorial with the headline "Trump’s healthcare disruption could pay off — if he pushes real reform."
Writing on X, Reinhart directly called out billionaire LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who promoted the editorial on the same platform using what Reinhart said was blatantly misleading framing.
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"I am the author of this OpEd, which was given a misleading title and from which key lines were cut -- lines that made very clear that RFK Jr is dangerously ignorant, has absolutely no business near HHS, and is effectively a mass murderer in waiting," fumed Reinhart. "My suggested title, which reflects the content I expected to go to press, was 'RFK Jr’s Wrecking Ball Won’t Fix Public Health.' A vote for RFK Jr is a vote for nothing but chaos, the opposite of the essential public-systems building I argue for in the OpEd, and mass death."
Reinhart then posted an excerpt that was removed from the editorial in which he compared RFK Jr. to accused murderer Luigi Mangione, who allegedly gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year.
"Although RFK Jr. and Luigi Mangione are both responses to the same underlying problem of US healthcare corruption, there is a major difference between them: one operated outside the law to kill one person in defense of millions, whereas the other... seeks to use the law itself to inflict preventable deaths on those millions," Reinhart wrote at the close of his original editorial.
LA Times opinion page staffers have accused Soon-Shiong of interfering with their work by allegedly barring op-eds that are critical of President Donald Trump unless the paper runs a separate editorial that gives the "opposite view" of the president's rhetoric and actions.