President Donald Trump took aim at frequent target Kaitlan Collins during this year’s rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“I want to personally congratulate CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award. It was all about me. It’s a fake — she shouldn’t get the award, it was a fake,” Trump, 80, said during the Friday, July 24, event, which was moved to the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, D.C., following the security breach and subsequent shooting at the annual April fundraiser.
Collins, 34, was previously awarded for her coverage of the president’s contentious Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy — an exchange that sparked fierce criticism of the president and his continued friendship with various dictators, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
“But I don’t mind, I said, ‘Kaitlan, congratulations.’ But it was fake, there’s no question about it,” the president continued, before turning his attention to Collins’ appearance. “She’s a young, attractive woman. She never smiles. I said, ‘Kaitlan, 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 added of the news anchor’s looks, “I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship, but then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney.”
Trump’s decision to compare Collins to Mulvaney, a trans actress, has been wildly criticized as transphobic, as the president and his administration have repeatedly targeted trans athletes competing in women’s sports and trans youth — as well as trans adults — accessing gender-affirming care.
Us has reached out to the White House for comment.
The president’s speech at the rescheduled dinner, meant to celebrate the freedom of speech and freedom of the press, was not the first instance in which the commander-in-chief has targeted Collins and her looks specifically.
“She’s a young beautiful woman. Never smiles. I never see a smile off her face,” Trump said of the reporter during an Oval Office press conference earlier this month. “I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes, like she has hatred, because we had borders, because we have a strong military, because we cut our taxes, because we do things that everybody wanted, and then we win our election in a massive landslide.”
He continued at the time, “People like you have abused our people so badly. The fake news, like CNN, like The New York Times, and like others, have abused our people, have abused our people so badly.”
Two days after The New York Times published the first of two stories on the security concerns surrounding the president’s new Air Force One jet, gifted to him by Turkey, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed subpoenas against three reporters in an attempt to force them to reveal their sources.
On Thursday, July 23, the DOJ dropped the subpoenas it filed against the reporters, admitting the administration made “legal errors,” per the Associated Press, after a federal judge criticized the DOJ for potentially violating the First Amendment.
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