Anderson Cooper defended his CNN colleague Kaitlan Collins after Donald Trump’s latest “completely unwarranted” comments targeting her.
On Wednesday night’s episode of “Anderson Cooper 360,” the host called out the president for again attacking Collins during a reporter scrum in the Oval Office earlier that day. Cooper made it clear that Trump only really calls out female reporters for things like this – and it’s far from the first time Collins had been his target.
“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,” Cooper said.
He added: “That doesn’t happen to men. No one’s ever said that to me in an office setting. 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.”
The president lashed out at Collins during a press conference in the Oval Office where he addressed his decision to drop the Anti-Weaponization Fund, a $1.8 billion slush fund that was supposed to help out Trump’s political allies, including Jan. 6 rioters. He pointed to Collins and said he never saw her smile and she had betrayed her conservative roots by working at CNN.
“CNN’s a very corrupt organization, with a corrupt reporter standing right there, never smiles,” Trump said. “A young beautiful woman never smiles. I never see a smile off her face. I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes. Like she has hatred because we have borders, because we have a strong military, because we cut our taxes, because we do things that everybody wanted.”
He later added: “She was a conservative from Alabama, can you believe it? But in particular, CNN does such false reporting, but now they have new ownership, so maybe it’ll straighten it out. It’s hard to straighten garbage out.”
Trump had previously snapped at Collins in the past for not smiling enough when she questioned him about the Epstein Files. In fact, the president has had a consistent track record of verbally attacking female reporters since he took office for his second term.
You can watch Cooper’s full segment in the video above.
