Kaitlan Collins fired back after President Trump blasted her as “stupid” and “nasty” in his latest swipe at a female journalist.
The CNN anchor responded by highlighting a key lapse in Trump’s recollection in his rage-filled Truth Social post on Saturday.
“Caitlin Collins of Fake News CNN, always Stupid and Nasty,” the 79-year-old wrote on Truth Social Saturday, in a savage and questionably spelled verbal assault on the network’s chief White House correspondent, Katilan Collins.
“[She] asked me why the new Ballroom was costing more money than originally thought one year ago,” he went on, in apparent reference to the pair’s red carpet exchange at the Kennedy Center Friday night.
Collins corrected the record in a pointed Instagram Story, sharing a screenshot of Trump’s rant. “Technically my question was about Venezuela,” she wrote.
Trump’s White House ballroom plans, along with an original price tag of $200 million that has since ballooned to $300 million, were announced in July of this year.
While the CNN host had very briefly mentioned the controversy in Friday’s edition of The Source with Katilan Collins, she appears to have in fact approached Trump on Friday to ask whether his nomination for FIFA’s “peace prize” was appropriate given both his mounting threats of war against Venezuela, and ongoing military strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean widely slammed by critics as amounting to war crimes.
“I can tell you I did settle eight wars and we have a ninth coming,” the president said. “I want to really save lives. I don’t need prizes. I need to save lives.”
Sidestepping Collins’ question completely, Trump’s comments served to rehash the same dubious peacemaking credentials that had already failed to secure him this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, but which nevertheless proved sufficient later in the evening to see him granted the new FIFA honor, incidentally cooked up by the organization’s pro-Trump president, Gianni Infantino, in the days after the president’s Nobel snub.
His subsequent Truth Social tirade against the CNN reporter also follows just weeks after he sparked massive public outcry for telling another female journalist, Bloomberg News’ Catherine Lucey, to be “quiet, piggy.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story.
