After President Trump snapped at CNN’s Kaitlan Collins at a press stop on Tuesday, he followed it up with another his often late night social media posts, calling her a “SLEAZEBAG” and more. So, on Wednesday morning, Collins’ colleague Jake Tapper came to her defense, as well as the network’s.
In his post, the president not only called out Collins directly, but also ranted that CNN employees are “all sick, treasonous, and demented” and shouldn’t have even been at the United Nations event, considering they said they wouldn’t be covering him. In his response, Tapper kept things brief.
“Not going to dignify the president’s juvenile social media post about our brilliant @kaitlancollins except to say she and we are going to keep doing our jobs, which is to ask and cover the questions voters care about — like those about the war in Iran and the economy,” he wrote.
Indeed, during Trump’s appearance Tuesday morning at the United Nations general assembly, Collins pressed him on those topics. She also made a point to correct the man, noting that no such promise of not covering him was made — instead, he banned the network.
“We never said we were not going to cover the president, we will do our best to cover him each and every day,” Collins explained. “We were actually positioned in this spot last year when the president was here, long before all of this back and forth over access to The White House began as it did on Friday. And we will continue to cover the president, despite their efforts to block CNN from accessing The White House grounds, as we are currently fighting in court.”
CNN is among the three outlets the president banned from the White House this week, revoking credentials out of anger over their coverage. He also banned MS NOW and Politico. As a result, the rest of the White House pool banded together to boycott covering the White House, leading Trump to speak at an event but not be able to be heard, because there were no mics.
CNN was only present at the UN on Tuesday because they were credentialed by the UN itself, not the Trump administration.
