It is well established in the pages of The Federalist that while corporate media exist to hate you, you don’t hate corporate media enough. The New York Times further proved that argument this week when it smeared Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for raising a big, happy family.
For the crime of fathering nine children by the same woman (who happens to be his wife), Duffy became the target of a tedious hit piece from the NYT’s “American family” reporter, Caroline Kitchener.
Duffy and his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, are part of the fortunate demographic of men and women with children who are most likely to report being “very happy” with their lives. By the self-proclaimed cat lady’s standards, however, the Duffys’ lifelong goal of sharing the joy and purpose that comes with creating and raising children of their own in a loving, Christian home is concerning.
Even more allegedly alarming, according to Kitchener, is Duffy’s quest to prioritize federal funding for areas of the U.S. yielding higher birth and marriage rates. Kitchener made sure to include commentary from unannamed Democrats who called the policy plan “deeply frightening” and “disturbingly dystopian.”
The amount of time Kitchener allegedly spent watching MTV (15 hours, according to a blurb at the top of the article) to fuel her screed about the Trump cabinet member doesn’t matter too much, but her background is important. Before she began writing hit pieces on people like the Duffys for the New York Times, Kitchener spent years at the Washington Post as a self-described abortion reporter.
With that information in mind, it should come as no surprise that one of the invasive and inappropriate questions Kitchener lobbed at Duffy demanded he explain whether he and his wife ever considered aborting their firstborn child Evita.
“By my calculation, and according to several sources, you and Mrs. Campos-Duffy got pregnant several months before you got married. I know you two are now passionate antiabortion advocates. Did you ever consider abortion?” Kitchener wrote in a comment request obtained by The Federalist. The NYT writer made sure to include a line in her article noting the Duffys got married in 1999, “already several months pregnant.”
Kitchener, who claims to value “empathetic reporting,” also harped on Duffy’s sexual history and even threw some jabs at his wife and children. She even opened her long and winding story with the strange and seemingly pointless lede: “Sean Duffy would like you to watch his family making pancakes.” In her description of a 2017 Fox & Friends segment featuring a Duffy family pancake breakfast, Kitchener described the Duffy clan as an “unusually large family” and even suggested the kids “smiled uncomfortably at the camera.”
Throughout the article, Kitchener nitpicked the Transportation Secretary for his family’s long-standing presence in the TV and podcast spotlight. Her biggest gripe, though, appears to be that the Duffys “present their way of life — marriage, pancakes and many children — as a far more fulfilling alternative” to the abortion and birth control-driven childlessness infecting American culture.
Having more kids than the replacement rate is undoubtedly good for a nation suffering from falling birth rates. To Kitchener, however, big families seem to be a bad thing.
Never mind that the Duffy children are likely more socially adept and less likely to divorce than their peers from smaller households. They will also reap the many benefits that come from growing up under the care of their married, biological parents.
It is telling that Kitchener, despite speaking to “nearly two dozen people who know Sean Duffy,” could not find a single person who would go on the record or even on background to snark on the Transportation Secretary and his family-centered life and goals. In fact, former colleagues affirmed Duffy is “authentic” and suggested his family image is “like a little slice of Americana.”
Duffy was so invested in his brood that he sacrificed his career (and time in the public eye) to be at home with his family during his ninth child’s medical complications.
If the NYT wanted to cover a Transportation Secretary riddled with scandal, the publication need not look farther than President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the DOT: Pete Buttigieg.
It was Buttigieg who appeared to fake biking to work, presumably in the name of saving the planet; “announce[d] the birth” of two children while posing with another man in a hospital bed; and boasted about the benefits of abortion and birth control for men who don’t want to take responsibility for their sex lives.
Instead, the publication, armed with an abortion activist disguised as a reporter, aimed its fire at a happy and successful man, his happy and successful wife, and their happy and successful children, all because they promote the secret to their endless joy whenever and however they can.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
