President Donald Trump can’t get Kaitlan Collins off his mind.
The 80-year-old president launched a fresh broadside against the CNN star on Sunday, using AI to depict Collins, 34, as Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender actress despised by MAGA devotees for appearing in Bud Light advertisements.
Trump posted a doctored image that overlaid Collins’ face on Mulvaney’s body. The original image of Mulvaney came from a 2023 video in which she promoted Bud Light while donning an Aubrey Hepburn-inspired outfit. The campaign triggered a right-wing boycott of the beer brand that sent its sales down by more than a billion dollars.
![Donald Trump on Truth Social [AI-generated image]](https://www.thedailybeast.com/resizer/v2/JRXJ4SDPPZHNNAFO7EZTMOUXVI.jpg?auth=f03743c022f1ed24985e86c93a1b2f2eaecb1cde88b719364974effe109ff7c9&width=800&height=1228)
The president posted the image to his Truth Social page without a caption. When reached for comment, a CNN spokesperson referred the Daily Beast back to the network’s statement on Friday defending Collins as “an exceptional, trusted journalist.”
“She reports every day from the White House and the field with real strength and tenacity and skillfully brings that reporting to the anchor chair and CNN platforms every day. We stand by her to the fullest extent,” the statement read.
The petty post followed Trump’s attacks on Collins during the redo of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday.
Collins took home the Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure for her coverage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s tense Oval Office meeting with Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance in 2025.
The CNN anchor shook hands with the president when she came onstage to receive the award. But the recognition clearly irked Trump, who took jabs at her during his speech.
“I want to personally congratulate CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award. It was all about me. It was a fake, she shouldn’t get the award, it was a fake. But I didn’t mind. I said, ‘Kaitlan, congratulations.’ But it was fake, there’s no question about it,” he ranted.
“But she’s a young, attractive woman,” Trump continued as the audience grimaced. “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.”
Trump proceeded to suggest that Collins looked like Mulvaney, a comparison that he appeared to perceive as an insult.
“I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship,” he said. “But then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney.”
Collins appeared to allude to the president’s bizarre comments in her Instagram post about the event.
“The second best part of last night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner was receiving an award from my friend and mentor, @wolfblitzer,“ she captioned the post. “The first was reminding everyone why the First Amendment—and asking uncomfortable questions that people in power don’t like—matters.”
The series of photos posted by Collins ended with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt that read, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
