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Anderson Cooper defended his NCS colleague Kaitlan Collins following one other private assault from President Donald Trump
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Following a query about his $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund on Wednesday, Trump lashed out at Collins, calling her a “corrupt reporter” who questioned him “with hatred in her eyes”
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“That doesn’t happen to men. No one’s ever said that to me in an office setting,” Cooper stated
NCS anchor Anderson Cooper defended his colleague, NCS chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, after President Donald Trump launched into another tirade about the reporter and her look within the Oval Office on Wednesday, June 4.
Trump railed towards Collins, complaining that the “young, beautiful woman” was a “corrupt reporter” for “a very corrupt organization” and complained that she “never smiles” and approaches him “with hatred in her eyes.”
On Anderson Cooper 360 on Wednesday evening, Cooper referred to as the feedback “completely unwarranted” and stated, “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.”
resident Donald Trump speaks throughout an occasion within the Oval Office of the White House on June 3.
Credit: Kevin Dietsch/Getty
“That doesn’t happen to men. No one’s ever said that to me in an office setting,” Cooper stated. “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.”
He then performed a montage of Trump berating women reporters, together with another Oval Office rant towards Collins on Feb. 3 after she requested about Jeffrey Epstein‘s survivors and the president referred to as her “the worst reporter” and complained, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile.”
“I’ve known you for 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face,” Trump stated on the time.
Collins, 34, joined NCS in 2017 after beforehand working for the right-wing information outlet The Daily Caller.
She started overlaying Trump throughout the 2016 marketing campaign and reported on each his administrations, the 2020 and 2024 elections, and his trip of workplace within the years since.
Abby Phillip, Anderson Cooper, and Kaitlan Collins converse onstage throughout the Warner Bros. Discovery Upfront 2026 at The Theater at Madison Square Garden on May 13 in New York.
Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty
Other clips in Cooper’s montage included: Trump telling ABC News’ Rachel Scott she was “obnoxious” and a “terrible reporter” throughout a Cabinet assembly in December, calling CBS News’ Nancy Cordes a “stupid person” on Thanksgiving Day, berating ABC News’ Mary Bruce throughout a November 2025 Oval Office assembly with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and telling Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey “quiet, piggy” throughout a gaggle on Air Force One two days earlier.
On Wednesday, Cooper additionally interviewed Collins about what Trump had been discussing earlier than he launched into his assaults: the proposed $1.8 billion slush fund for victims of “government weaponization.”
Journalist and NCS information anchor Kaitlan Collins, middle, and different journalists on the White House on Feb. 7.
Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty
The president has begun to backtrack after outrage that the fund would supply payouts to these prosecuted and convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of all 1,500 charged or convicted in reference to the riot on his first day again in workplace final yr, together with the leaders of far-right avenue gangs and militias.
“I love it. I think it’s so important,” Trump stated in response to one other reporter’s query. “What happened to great people, great American people, the way they were victimized, the way they were savaged. You have suicides. They kill themselves. They went bankrupt.”
The fund is a results of a lawsuit Trump filed against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which he now oversees, and was permitted by appearing Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former legal protection legal professional, whom he nominated to maintain the function completely in a while Wednesday.
About two uninterrupted minutes into his reply, Trump then referenced Collins, who had not requested the query, throughout an apart about his personal legal prosecutions in between his stints within the White House.
Among his feedback on her look and smile, Trump accused Collins of getting “hatred because we have 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.”
President Donald Trump speaks throughout an govt order signing within the Oval Office on June 3.
Credit: Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg by way of Getty
After discussing the fund, Cooper stated he wasn’t going to ask Collins concerning the sexist assaults “because she’s got actual work to do, and she doesn’t need to be answering questions about this kind of behavior.”
“I don’t know why I’m surprised by this, I shouldn’t be,” Cooper instructed visitor Tara Palmeri, a longtime D.C. reporter who coated nationwide politics for ABC News, Politico, Puck and others. “It’s just bizarre that this is something he does over and over and over again. I mean, and I think people do it to women all the time.”
Palmeri stated she believes Trump attacked Collins as a result of she’s “a woman with agency” and “a lot of power” who’s serving as a proxy for the American public, “holding him to account by asking him questions in the Oval Office.
“He doesn’t like that the vessel of an individual who’s asking them, these questions that problem him, is a girl,” Palmeri argued. “Because he is used to ladies being round him who’re individuals pleasers, who’re smilers, who’re secretaries, who’re cupboard secretaries, as we have seen from the varied hearings that we have really watched on TV and the deference that they present him.”
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