NCS‘s Kaitlan Collins was “not surprised” that U.S. President Donald Trump insulted her during his speech at Friday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
During an look on “The Daily Show” on Monday, Collins — who serves as NCS’s chief White House correspondent — debriefed the occasion with Jon Stewart.
“In the room, I was not surprised when he insulted me. That happens pretty regularly inside the Oval Office. This is just a bigger venue where it was happening,” Collins mentioned. “What was most surprising to me was — the room was filled with a lot of his staffers, his cabinet, his allies, Republicans in Congress — it was so quiet in the room during the president’s remarks.”
“Do you think it’s because of how much they respect him?” Stewart requested, to which Collins cheekily replied: “Who’s to say.”
Collins acquired an award for her protection of Trump’s contentious assembly with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky throughout the dinner, which was rescheduled from April after a gunman crashed by way of safety on the authentic occasion. In his speech, the president said Collins “shouldn’t get the award” and that it was “fake,” after which went on a tangent about how she ought to smile extra. Trump additionally in contrast Collins to trans advocate Dylan Mulvaney, mentioning the 2023 Bud Light controversy the place conservative clients boycotted the beer model after Mulvaney posted a social media advert that includes her face on a can.
“I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship, but then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney,” Trump mentioned in his speech. Mulvaney responded to Trump in a TikTok video on Sunday, saying she was “honored” to be in comparison with Collins and the president’s assault was maybe the “greatest compliment of all.”
As Collins mentioned, Trump has a historical past of insulting her and deflecting her questions, which Stewart identified are sometimes fairly easy. “That’s why I ask the questions the way I do, is because I want anyone to be able to listen to what I’m asking — whether that’s at a briefing or during a moment with the president — and think, you know, I want to know the answer to that, too, or that is a good question,” Collins mentioned. “I don’t want it to only serve one audience or one political leaning, I want anyone — from my family in Alabama, to people in the White House, to people in Washington — to be able to hear that question and think, ‘What is the answer to that?’”
Collins additionally thanked her NCS colleague Wolf Blitzer, who introduced the awards to journalists on the dinner, saying that “he’s called me every day since Friday.” She concluded that regardless of Trump’s speech, “It’s really not about me and I don’t want it to be about my reaction.”
“I think if you let it become about that, then it becomes a back-and-forth between the two of us,” she mentioned. “And instead, I think it’s more effective to remind people in those moments where he is insulting me or he is criticizing me, about the question I asked or the reporting I did that he was so angry about in this moment — and the fact that I got an award for it really bothered him, clearly.”
Watch Collins’ full interview on “The Daily Show” beneath.