Kaitlan Collins won a White House Correspondents’ Association award Friday night for her coverage of the Oval Office blowup between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, which gave Trump something to address ten minutes into his own remarks.
He congratulated her first, then took it back almost immediately. “I want to personally congratulate CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award,” he said at the Waldorf Astoria. “It was all about me. It’s a fake. She shouldn’t get the award. It was a fake, but I didn’t mind.”
From there, the tone slid into something considerably less flattering. “But she’s a young, attractive woman. 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.'”
The line that actually drew groans came next. “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.” He seemed pleased enough with himself to add a footnote: “Dylan Mulvaney cost Bud like $35 million in market cap. It was the worst commercial ever made, by the way.”
Trump: “I want to personally congratulate CNN’s Kaitlan Collins… I thought she 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.” pic.twitter.com/7UEw7WYaCW
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) July 25, 2026
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CNN wasn’t willing to let that sit unanswered, even mid-speech.
Worldwide chairman Mark Thompson put out a statement while Trump was still at the podium. “We stand by our journalists and the integrity and fair mindedness with which the CNN team reports the news,” he said. “Honest, accurate journalism may sometimes irritate politicians, but our right to report and present that reporting to the public without government interference is fully protected by the U.S. Constitution.”
— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) July 25, 2026
WHCA President Weijia Jiang stepped up once Trump was done and made a point of defending Collins herself, telling the room she has “a beautiful smile.”
Collins was far from the only name on the list.
Jake Tapper became “Fake Tapper.” Don Lemon got tagged with the “lowest ratings and the lowest IQ.” Anderson Cooper received something closer to a compliment wrapped in an insult: “I like Anderson actually because he’s covered me well for many years, and he went bad as soon as I went for politics.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Dawsey, honored for his reporting on an alleged Epstein letter, got called “unhireable” before Trump pivoted into a strange sort of praise: “He’s been killing me for years. And yet tonight he shakes my hand. He hugs me. Everything nice. He kills me. Josh is amazing.” Trump opened the whole thing by telling the room they represented “the largest group of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome‘ people put together at one time, I suspect.”
The dinner marked Trump’s first appearance at the event as president since 2015, arriving three months after April’s original ceremony was cut short by a gunman who breached security in an attempted assassination. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller were all present. Melania Trump, JD Vance and Marco Rubio skipped it, with the White House citing scheduling conflicts.
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
