Stern, Straight and Determined: The Reporter Who Won’t Rise to It

Commentary based on reported events, not satire. Sources are linked so you can check them.

Nobody hired Kaitlan Collins to smile.

That’s worth saying, because in February the President of the United States complained that she doesn’t. She had been asking him what he’d say to people who feel they haven’t received justice over Jeffrey Epstein. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile,” he told her. Most of us would have got flustered or bitten back. Collins replied: “I’m asking you about survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse, Mr president.”

That one line tells you most of what you need to know about her. She’s feisty, but she doesn’t make it a show. She’s stern, she’s straight, and she’s still on the question when everyone else has been distracted.

She grew up in Prattville, Alabama, studied at the University of Alabama, and started out at The Daily Caller before joining CNN in 2017. She now hosts The Source and is the network’s chief White House correspondent.

At 26 she got an early taste of how this goes. In July 2018 she asked President Trump about Michael Cohen and Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office, then was told she couldn’t attend an open event in the Rose Garden that afternoon. The White House said she had “shouted questions and refused to leave.” CNN called the decision retaliatory. The strongest support came from a rival: Fox News said it stood “in strong solidarity with CNN.”

Eight years on, the pattern looks familiar. In September, days after Trump announced a ban on CNN, he told her at the United Nations: “You should not be here covering me.” Her answer was five words long and ended with a courtesy: “The United Nations allowed us in, sir.”

That evening she told Anderson Cooper: “The president is the one who’s trying to dictate how we cover him. And of course, it is still our job to do so.”

In October a judge blocked the ban, though the order doesn’t guarantee access to the Oval Office. This month, when she said the White House had blocked CNN from the TV pool, she did it in three plain sentences, with no adjectives to speak of. The White House answered with a joke and a link to its own video stream.

Here’s the part her fans and her critics both tend to miss. “My job is not to take down Trump,” she said last year. “I’m a reporter and an anchor.” She has even given him credit for his openness with the press: “Sometimes presidents are press-averse. Trump embraced the media.”

That’s the difference between a fighter and a reporter. A fighter wants to win the exchange, while a reporter wants the answer, and it’s hard to knock someone off course when getting the better of you was never what they came for.

So here’s to the stern face in the press pack. Somebody will tell her tomorrow that she shouldn’t be there. She’ll say “sir,” and ask again.