Key Points
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Anderson Cooper is defending NCS journalist Kaitlan Collins after Donald Trump criticized her as soon as once more.
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The president known as Collins a “young, beautiful woman” who “never smiles” and appears at him “with hatred in her eyes.”
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“That’s the president of the United States: a nearly 80-year-old man, who has no problem commenting on her physical appearance and telling her she needs to smile,” Cooper said.
Anderson Cooper is standing up for fellow NCS journalist Kaitlan Collins after Donald Trump lashed out at her once again.
The 79-year-old president criticized Collins and her physical appearance when speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, calling her a “corrupt reporter” in addition to a “young, beautiful woman” who “never smiles” and appears at him “with hatred in her eyes.”
Cooper called Trump’s remarks “completely unwarranted” on his show that same evening, adding, “That’s the president of the United States: a nearly 80-year-old man, who has no problem commenting on her physical appearance and telling her she needs to smile.”
Kaitlan Collins and Anderson Cooper
Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty
“That doesn’t happen to men. No one’s ever said that to me in an office setting,” he continued. “She was there, like every other journalist doing her job, standing around with a bunch of non-smiling men, by the way, all behind her. I don’t know if you saw that.”
Cooper proceeded to play a montage of all of the occasions Trump has chastised women reporters as president. Among the clips included was the previous Trump Steaks founder’s Feb. 3 tirade against Collins after she asked him several questions about the Epstein files.
“You are the worst reporter. NCS has no ratings because of people like you,” Trump said at the time. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face.”
It additionally featured a number of extra incidents, including the time he told a Bloomberg reporter: “Quiet, piggy.”
Cooper was then joined by journalist Tara Palmeri to discuss Trump’s repeated behavior of belittling women. “I don’t know why I’m surprised by this. I shouldn’t be,” the host admitted. “But I just… It’s just bizarre that this is something that he does over and over again, and I think people do it to women all the time.”
Palmeri noted Trump is “objectifying” Collins and “using a misogynistic comment about her appearance to belittle her.”
“When Kaitlan Collins is standing there, she is a woman with agency, and she has a lot of power,” she said. “She represents the people of the United States of America, and she’s holding him to account by asking him questions in the Oval Office.”
She went on to argue that Trump “does not like that the vessel of a person who is asking them, those questions that challenge him, is a woman,” adding, “Because he’s used to women being around him who are people pleasers, who are smilers, who are secretaries, who are cabinet secretaries, as we’ve seen from the various hearings that we’ve actually watched on TV and the deference that they show him.”
Watch Anderson discuss Trump’s comments in the clip above.
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