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Kaitlan Collins was awarded for her journalism over the weekend.
Donald Trump lashed out on stage, claiming that Collins’ reporting was “fake.”
After again complaining that Collins “never smiles,” he compared her to Dylan Mulvaney.
Trump’s intended insult sparked a flurry of discussion. And now Mulvaney is responding.
Congratulations to Kaitlan Collins!
On Friday, July 24, Kaitlan Collins was honored at the rescheduled White House Correspondents Dinner.
She specifically received an award for covering a meeting in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Donald Trump in the increasingly gilded Oval Office.
It was a contentious meeting and a diplomatic embarrassment to the US to behave in such an ill-mannered way towards an embattled ally — and a guest.
After Collins received her award, Trump stood up and rambled a bit, as is his habit.
As is also his habit, he decided to pepper Collins with both insults and attempted insults.
“It’s a fake — she shouldn’t get the award, it was a fake,” Trump claimed baselessly at the podium.
Does he mean that he never met with Zelenskyy? Or is he just lazily calling CNN “fake” in general? At this point, no one really knows what Trump’s trying to say — least of all Trump himself.
“But I don’t mind, I said, ‘Kaitlan, congratulations,’” he added, as if magnanimous. “But it was fake, there’s no question about it.”
Trump went from condemning journalism itself to his longstanding tradition of overt misogyny.
“She’s a young, attractive woman. She never smiles. I said, ‘Kaitlan, do you ever smile? Smile,” he said.
“You have a nice position, you’re at CNN fake news, you should be a happy person. So smile, Kaitlan, just smile.”
He then decided to take things in a more transphobic direction
“I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship,” Trump claimed.
He does not appear to be making a true statement here. Rather, it is the setup for what he believes is a bigoted insult.
“But then I informed that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney,” Trump continued.
It is clear that he invoked Mulvaney’s name as an attempted insult.
Mulvaney is a transgender influencer and once did a simple sponsorship for Bud Light in 2023. Comparing these women might not be an insult, but Trump clearly intended it as such.
@dylanmulvaney A response 🇺🇸❤️ please support trans and non binary people today and every day
♬ I Am America – Shea Diamond
At first, Mulvaney limited her response to simply sharing the same Eleanor Roosevelt quote that Kaitlan Collins herself had posted.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,” the quote reads.
Mulvaney later posted a longer video to TikTok, congratulating Collins on her win.
She also contextualized why the Trump regime is targeting her, how she lives rent-free in the minds of the country’s worst conservatives, simply for being herself. She also implored people to stand up for the trans community, who are under coordinated attack in multiple countries just for being themselves.
It sounds like Mulvaney and Collins both have a very healthy perspective on this. There’s nothing really healthy about Trump’s state of mind. That’s nothing new.