Kaitlan Collins Exposes Trump Mouthpiece’s Car Crash Debut
The CNN host also revealed the “brutal” texts shocked White House insiders sent her.
CNN’s chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins has exposed the true horror of watching Katie Zacharia’s car crash press briefing in person.
Zacharia, 41, conducted her first briefing on Tuesday, after taking on the role of White House press secretary following the departure of Karoline Leavitt.
The disastrous debut saw her confuse President Trump with her own husband, only answer three questions from conservative media outlets, then cut the briefing short after just 14 minutes.
Kaitlan Collins calls out Katie Zacharia on CNN.
CNN
Collins was in the room and told fill-in 360° host John Berman she was shocked by what went down.
“I mean, I’ve attended a lot of White House press briefings, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like that,” Collins said, stifling laughter.
“I mean, there were audible gasps in the room as she closed her binder and prepared to leave and said those were all the questions she would be taking, after only taking three questions.”
Kaitlan Collins was in the room with Katie Zacharia, with CNN adding a time clock of her short appearance.
CNN
She continued, “I think most people in that room thought that it would be a normal-length press briefing, which typically goes 45 minutes, even potentially up to an hour, especially after 10 minutes of prepared remarks that she was reading from when she came out to the lectern.”
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Collins added, “I think it surprised a lot of people in there, especially given the president was insistent on her holding a press briefing.”
The CNN host also revealed she received shocked texts from Trump insiders “almost immediately” after the ultra-brief briefing, which came just 24 hours after Zacharia started in the role.
Collins said the sources were “surprised by how fleeting the appearance was, and just how it was conducted, and the fact that she didn’t really take any questions from reporters who were there in the room, beyond those three initial ones, which was only five and a half minutes of questions.”
She added, “White House officials, who know what Trump likes in a press secretary, were texting me predicting that she would not last in this position very long. Obviously, we don’t know, and that’s up to the president.”
While hosting The Source on CNN later on Tuesday, Collins shed more light on the feeling inside the Trump administration.
“It wasn’t long after she had left the podium that officials started texting me about her fleeting first appearance in the briefing room,” Collins said, adding they had described it as “unusual,” “awkward,” and “brutal.”
Shawn McCreesh, White House correspondent for The New York Times, told Collins that you could “smell the fear” from Zacharia in the room.
“She seemed extremely nervous,” he said, noting she had left “the warm bath of Fox News” for a briefing room where “anything can happen,” making it a “totally different environment.”
Former Trump White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews was even harsher, saying reporters “who came to the briefing room hungry for answers left severely malnourished.”
Matthews pointed out that Leavitt, 29, “came out swinging” in her first press briefing.
The Daily Beast’s White House reporter Farrah Tomazin was also at the briefing and said reporters behind her were laughing.
“I was not expecting it, because, as we know, she’s a commentator on Fox News and other conservative networks,” she told Hugh Dougherty on the Daily Beast’s Substack. “She’s been doing the rounds before. So when she came out and started reading from the script, I thought, ‘Gosh, she’s really nervous’.”
After the briefing ended abruptly, “the place was aghast,” Tomazin said.
Zacharia went to considerable lengths to land the job. She tracked Trump’s public schedule and Truth Social posts to work out when he might be watching television, then timed her appearances on conservative networks to ensure her interviews might catch his eye.
Zacharia's first press briefing lasted just 14 minutes.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The strategy paid off, with influential figures at Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News Network backing her for the position, ahead of other hopefuls like CNN’s resident MAGA commentator Scott Jennings.
Her troubled debut has only added to mounting questions about her suitability for the role. Zacharia has repeatedly presented herself as an attorney, despite no evidence at this stage of which state she’s supposed to have passed the bar in.
Gamblers have already started placing bets on how quickly she’ll be off the job. A market opened on prediction platform Kalshi within minutes of her first briefing ending, with traders putting the odds of her departure before the end of 2026 at 99 percent on Tuesday.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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