It’s no secret that Kaitlan Collins gets under Donald Trump’s skin. Au contraire, the two’s feud goes way back — some may even remember that during Trump’s first term, he banned her from attending an event. Reason being? He saw her line of questioning as “inappropriate.”
ICYMI, in July 2018, Collins found herself on Trump’s bad side after she attended a photocall he had with the then-president of the European Commission and asked two questions he didn’t appreciate. First, she asked how he felt about an audio recording made by his former lawyer Michael Cohen, which had been obtained by CNN. As a brief refresher, said recording was of a conversation between Cohen and Trump regarding a model he’d had an affair with. Collins asked about it four times, with zero response from Trump. She then switched gears to another question, this time asking why Vladimir Putin hadn’t accepted an invitation to meet. It’s not clear which of those stung more (betrayed by a former confidante, snubbed by another president, oof, the drama), but not long after, Collins revealed that she’d been called aside afterwards and essentially told she couldn’t sit with the other members of the press for not wearing pink on a Wednesday asking “inappropriate” questions. “Bill Shine, the president’s latest hire, who is his right hand man for communications, it was him and the press secretary, Sarah Sanders, who told me that I would not be invited to an open press event here in the Rose Garden moments later at the White House, because they thought the questions that I’d posed to president Trump were ‘inappropriate’ and inappropriate for that venue,” she told CNN viewers.
Unsurprisingly, the move prompted a ton of backlash — and it wasn’t just CNN or the press pool Collins represented that backed her.
Kaitlan Collins was supported unanimously
While Bill Shine and Sarah Huckabee Sanders doubled down on their decision to uninvite Kaitlan Collins from the open press event (Sanders said anyone else from CNN was allowed to take Collins’ place, while Shine got into semantics, saying he’d never used the word “ban”), the news media by and large were unmoved. CNN called Donald Trump and his press team out in no uncertain terms, even rubbishing the claims that Collins had been “inappropriate.” “Just because the White House is uncomfortable with a question regarding the news of day doesn’t mean the question isn’t relevant and shouldn’t be asked,” the network’s statement read (via The Hill). Likewise, the White House Correspondents Association condemned the move and described it as “wholly inappropriate, wrong-headed, and weak.”
Fox News was also incredibly critical of Shine and Sanders’ antics. Speaking on “Special Report,” Bret Baier voiced the network’s support for Collins, saying, “As a member of the White House press pool, Fox stands firmly with CNN on this issue of access.” The president of Fox News, Jay Wallace, reiterated that, saying, “We stand in strong solidarity with CNN for the right to full access for our journalists as part of a free and unfettered press.”
Of course, Collins did return to the White House, and despite Trump’s menacing replies to her during press briefings during his second term, it certainly doesn’t seem as though she has any plans to go easier on him. Quite the opposite, their feud shows no signs of slowing down. As for the arguments that Collins was doing anything inappropriate, we’ll reiterate what she said on CNN after a brief run-in with Joe Biden years later (for which he actually apologized): “It is just our job to ask the president questions.”
