Award-winning CNN journalist Kaitlan Collins has become the latest target of Donald Trump’s verbal harassment but she says she isn’t fazed by his attacks on her and wants the focus to remain on the questions he refuses to answer.
At the recent White House correspondents dinner, Trump didn’t hold back as he made Collins, a tenacious and widely-respected reporter, the target of multiple insults. He mocked her appearance and also told her to “just smile”.
“She’s a young, attractive woman – she never smiles,” Trump said at the dinner. “She never smiles. I said, ‘Kaitlin, do you ever smile?’ Smile. You have a nice position. You’re at CNN fake news. You should be a happy person. So smile, Kaitlan. Just smile.”
He also made a joke that compared her to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, which fell incredibly flat with the audience.
Trump later doubled down on the Mulvaney joke, posting to Truth Social an AI-generated photo from a Budweiser ad that placed Collins’ face on the body of Mulvaney.
It came as Collins was given an award for her reporting of the US president’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump called the WHCA Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure award “fake”.
“In the room, I was not surprised when he insulted me. That happens pretty regularly inside the Oval Office. This is just a bigger venue where it was happening,” Collins reflected while speaking to Jon Stewart on a recent episode of the Daily Show.
“What was most surprising to me was, the room was filled with a lot of his staffers, his Cabinet, his allies, Republicans in Congress — it was so quiet in the room during the president’s remarks.”
When asked about her reaction to being insulted, Collins said: “It’s really not about me, and I don’t want it to be about my reaction. If you let it become about that, then it becomes a back and forth between the two of us.”
“Instead I think it’s more effective to remind people in those moments, when he is insulting me or when he is criticising me about the question I asked, or the reporting I did that he was so angry about in this moment and the fact that I got an award for it, really bothered him, clearly.
“In those moments it’s important to put the reminder back on the work, on the question, and the non-answers that we get.”
It was widely reported that Trump bombed at the correspondents’ dinner, delivering a long-winded, rambling speech that failed to make much sense or produce laughs from the audience.
Who is Kaitlan Collins?
Collins is a CNN anchor and the network’s Chief White House Correspondent. She is widely known for her persistent and often hard-hitting questions to Trump during press conferences at the White House. In February this year, Trump infamously told Collins to smile after she asked a question related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
While speaking to John Stewart, Collins said over time she has changed how she asks questions in order to highlight how Trump deflects them.
“That’s why I ask the questions the way I do — because I want anyone to be able to listen to what I’m asking, whether that’s at a briefing or during a moment with the president, and think, ‘I want to know the answer to that, too,’ or ‘That is a good question,’” Collins said on the Daily Show.
“I don’t want it to only serve one audience or one political leaning. I want anyone — from my family in Alabama, to people in the White House, to people in Washington — to be able to hear that question and think, ‘What is the answer to that?’”
Trump’s attacks on Collins, and on other reporters, are not new. They have been frequent occurrences, particularly throughout his second presidency. He frequently attacks female journalists who push back on him, hurling personal insults.
In November last year, Trump directed a derogatory remark at Bloomberg News White House correspondent Catherine Lucey, telling her “Quiet, piggy” after she questioned him about the Epstein files while aboard Air Force One.
Just a week later, has also called New York Times journalist Katie Rogers, “ugly inside and out”.
He also reacted with personal insults towards ABC reporter Mary Bruce when she asked him about the Epstein files, telling her she was “a terrible person and a terrible reporter. It’s the way you ask these questions”.