Kaitlan Collins is making her next move after the president launched his deranged tirade against the CNN star.
After Donald Trump, 80, spent the weekend obsessing over Collins, 34, the latter will appear on Monday night’s episode of The Daily Show, which consistently tears apart the president and his various antics.
Collins will be the main guest on The Daily Show, speaking to anchor and outspoken Trump critic Jon Stewart.
The pair will likely touch upon the president’s fixation on Collins, which reached a peak at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday.
There, Collins was honored with the Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure for her coverage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s 2025 visit to the Oval Office.
The president later attempted to use his speech to lambast the journalist who serves as CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent.
“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 rambled.
“But she’s a young, attractive woman,” Trump continued. “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 also appeared to compare Collins to actor and transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney. While attempting to make jokes for a mostly-silent audience, the president said, “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.”
The president was referencing Mulvaney’s sponsorship deal with the beer brand that had MAGA in hysterics. Trump later posted an AI-generated image of Collins’ face on Mulvaney’s body, surrounded by Bud Light cans.
Mulvaney responded to Trump’s WHCD remarks, beginning by congratulating Collins on her award. She then clapped back at the president for his obsession with her and his multiple attempts to include her in his “diss track.”
Trump’s obsession with Collins was amplified this past weekend, but the CNN correspondent has been living rent-free in the president’s head since his first term in office. His most frequent insult to Collins comes in the form of telling the award-winning correspondent to smile more, infamously bringing up that advice once again during an interview about Jeffrey Epstein’s victims in February.
“When I asked him about Epstein in the Oval Office, he said, ‘In the 10 years you’ve covered me, I’ve never seen you smile,’” Collins recalled to Interview Magazine. “He was surrounded by lawmakers and was showing off all these new hats he had on his desk, and I was thinking about what questions I wanted to ask regarding a sex trafficker who ruined the lives of dozens of women.”
Collins has theorized the president turns to insulting her because he “doesn’t like” her questions.
While Collins may get the final word tonight, she has already made a few references to Trump’s meltdown over the past weekend.
“The second best part of last night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner was receiving an award from my friend and mentor, @wolfblitzer,“ she wrote on Instagram, accompanied by a photograph of herself and Blitzer. “The first was reminding everyone why the First Amendment—and asking uncomfortable questions that people in power don’t like—matters.”
In her post, she also included a photograph with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
