CNN anchor Anderson Cooper pushed back hard Wednesday night after President Donald Trump verbally targeted his colleague Kaitlan Collins in the Oval Office, telling the network's chief White House correspondent she should smile more and has “hatred in her eyes.”
“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 on his program. “That doesn’t happen to men. No one’s ever said that to me in an office setting.”
Cooper underscored that Collins was surrounded by male journalists who also weren't grinning during the exchange, but only she was singled out. “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,” he said. “She gets singled out.”
Trump’s remarks came while he was answering a question about the now-abandoned $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. He first called CNN “corrupt” and “crooked as hell,” then turned his focus to Collins. “But with a corrupt reporter standing right there, never smiles,” he said. “You never see a young, beautiful woman who never smiles. I never see a smile on her face. I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes.”
The White House dismissed Cooper’s criticism on Thursday. Spokesman Davis Ingle issued a statement calling Cooper a “talentless hack who should also smile more.”
This is not the first time Trump has gone after Collins’s appearance or demeanor. In February, during an Oval Office exchange about Justice Department files tied to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the president criticized her for not smiling. Last December, he called her “stupid and nasty” over what he claimed were questions about the White House ballroom; Collins later clarified on social media that her question was actually about Venezuela.
Former Trump deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews, who now works as a CNN contributor, condemned the president’s latest attack. “It is disgusting to watch him tell a woman that she needs to smile while doing her job,” Matthews said. “I’ve seen Kaitlan smile plenty of times, but when she’s asking someone a hard-hitting question, I don’t think that that means that she has to smile while doing it.” Read more about Matthews's broader criticism of Trump's treatment of women in her recent interview on CNN.
The clash also comes as Trump continues to push his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, which was blocked by three GOP senators crossing the aisle. The fund has been a flashpoint in the ongoing debate over executive power and the Justice Department’s independence.
Cooper’s defense of Collins has reignited discussion about the gendered nature of Trump’s attacks on female journalists. The president has a long history of targeting women in the media with personal insults about their looks and demeanor, a pattern that critics say reveals a deeper misogyny. Collins, for her part, has continued to cover the White House aggressively, often pressing Trump on controversial topics.
