Clare Malone: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Clare Malone. I'm a staff writer and I cover politics and the media business. [music]

Clare: When I talk to longtime journalists about Donald Trump, I sometimes hear a kind of astonishment about how American politics changed so much so quickly. You're probably familiar with what I'm talking about. Even 10 years into Trump's emergence in national politics, we are shocked that a president could threaten to annex Canada, for example, or blame DEI for a plane crash. Trump is not outside the box, to use the old phrase, he blew up the box, and it's instinctive for people who have covered politics for a long time to point out how far afield he's gone. Not to mention, it's also part of our job.

Kaitlan Collins was only a couple years out of college when she became White House correspondent for The Daily Caller, the news and opinion site cofounded by Tucker Carlson. Professionally, she's pretty much only known the feverish Trump media environment. Collins went over to CNN during Trump's first term, and she's returned to the White House for his second term. Now, Trump, of course, disdains CNN, and he's not a big fan of Kaitlan Collins.

Kaitlan Collins: Can I ask you a question?

Donald Trump: No, not CNN. Please go ahead.

Kaitlan Collins: The White House has not responded to [unintelligible 00:01:13] to describe--

Donald Trump: I told you, CNN is fake news. Don't talk to me. Go ahead, please.

Kaitlan Collins: When he says he was retaliated against--

Clare Malone: He called her nasty, and at one point she was barred from a press conference. We've never had a White House so openly hostile to the press as we do now, and how journalists can actually report in this environment is something I want to talk about with Kaitlan Collins. We spoke last week. Kaitlan, you've said before that you have to get up before the tweets, and I'm kind of curious, you have essentially two jobs. What are all of the things that you're reading first thing in the morning to help you prep for a day at the White House?

Kaitlan Collins: There's just so much to look through with Trump because he doesn't really sleep that much. You wake up to Truth Social post from him about how he's voiding all the pardons that President Biden issued. I do look at Truth Social as one of my first stops just to see what he has said. Then I'll look at my email. CNN gets a ton of overnight email because we have so many international alerts, but the benefit of being on TV until 10:00 PM Eastern is there's not a ton that I miss overnight anymore. Before, there used to be, but because I work so late that I don't really miss that much, if that makes sense.

Clare Malone: Yes. I was going to ask you what the biggest difference is, reporting-wise, between the first Trump administration and the second Trump administration.

Kaitlan Collins: A lot of the staff is actually quite similar. There's massive changes in the staff, but a lot of the core staff around him are the same people that have been around him for the last four years. Trump himself, though, is unchanged in the sense of his schedule and how he operates, and so I think if you covered it round one, it's not that it's any less chaotic or less busy, but you're just kind of more adjusted to it.

Doing the chief White House correspondent job and doing my show, knock on wood, has not actually been that much of a stretch for me because they're so intertwined, but I think it's because I know how Trump operates. He doesn't really do much in the morning, maybe he'll be posting, but he's not doing a lot of meetings or press conferences or anything. Then in the afternoons it can be quite busy and you could be going in there for a 45-minute press conference and you've really got to be paying attention to what's the headline here. There's so much that's different, but so much that it is incredibly similar to round one.

Clare Malone: The White House briefing room in general, the back and forths, like an interaction between you and Karoline Leavitt became a New York Post story. An exchange between CNN's Kaitlan Collins and Karoline Leavitt. There is a confrontational edge to how she interacts with you, interacts with other reporters. Here's a clip from the other day.

Karoline Leavitt: That would propose perhaps criminal or illegal behavior if staff members were signing the president of the United States autograph without his consent.

Kaitlan Collins: The president is on the record talking about issuing preemptive pardons to these people.

Karoline Leavitt: Was he aware of his signature being used on every single pardon? That's a question you should ask the Biden White House.

Kaitlan Collins: Is there any evidence on that that he wasn't aware of it?

Karoline Leavitt: You're a reporter, you should find out. Sean.

Kaitlan Collins: [unintelligible 00:04:24].

Clare Malone: I'm curious how you think about strategically handling that kind of friction between you and the White House press secretary.

Kaitlan Collins: If you watch the interaction, it's not as sensational as the New York Post makes it seem. I think they just do that for clicks. Two, I think that there's a job to do for each of us in terms of her job is to spin for her boss. I mean, people will disagree if you're the press secretary, what your role is, but as a Trump spokesperson, that is your job. My job is to ask questions and get answers. There's always a natural tension between the press secretary for anyone and the press that covers them, and Trump watches these briefings really closely.

He handed Karoline Leavitt, had someone pass her a note in the middle of a briefing the other day and asked her to highlight a poll, and that was while she was out of the podium, and so that was notable. I think the third thing is, and this has always been my mantra kind of since round one, it's not about me. If you let them make it about you, I think you're losing, and so whenever I'm in there, I'm not trying to get in an argument or engage in some kind of fight. I'm going to ask my questions and I'm going to be persistent, and so I think that's always important to remember is that it's not about you.

Clare Malone: I'm curious if from first term to second term, I guess the social media trickle down feels at all different when it comes back to you. Right? The way that those clips are aggregated out, does that tangibly feel different to you?

Kaitlan Collins: Being on Twitter is a vastly different environment than it was when I was covering Trump eight years ago, and eight years ago, I found it to be more useful in terms of disagreement and engagement. That's not the case anymore, really. It's certainly much more shifted to the right, and so certainly the response I see on there is way different now than it was eight years ago. I know everyone says this, but it truly is not the real world because I'll see one narrative on there, and then I'll be out living my life and talking to sources or random people in the airports and just anywhere, and it's a completely different view and lens. It's really remarkable, actually.

Clare Malone: I use Twitter and Bluesky, and Bluesky leans left, I think. Right? It's really interesting to toggle between those two apps and just see how certain stories are being digested by--

Kaitlan Collins: Then you're on Threads, and it's like a different planet.

Clare Malone: Threads is about like middle school teachers being like, "Let me tell you a story about the worst student I ever had."

Kaitlan Collins: Or it's like tips on cooking or something. I know. There's such different social media environments, but you do see how people can have their beliefs reinforced so easily by going online and choosing their platform. My dad will see things on Facebook about me and then call me to ask if it's true sometimes. It's just so funny. My dad's like, "I saw this," and it just shows you that people can choose their own narratives.

Clare Malone: Yes. Do you think the majority of Americans have an accurate understanding of politics based on the news they consume?

Kaitlan Collins: I can see completely different worldviews of something. The Zelensky meeting is a really good example. I was in the Oval Office for that because CNN was the pool that day. We knew it would be tense. We knew it would be noteworthy. We had no idea that it was going to be like that. I mean, in that room, a pin could have dropped and no one was saying a word except the three of them. Then hearing how other people saw it, either people who were on the left or not in touch with the news or on the right, it was remarkable just to see how people's views of it were from what they saw on social media, in the news, in the headlines, and whatnot.

Clare Malone: The White House press pool and the way it's changed, obviously, the White House is now deciding who can travel with the pool, how has that changed how press briefings are, how even just like being in the pool is?

Kaitlan Collins: What happened for the people who aren't in the weeds on this is the White House took over the White House Correspondents' Association, which is its own independent entities responsibilities of determining the pool and the rotation every day, which is who's in it for TV, who's in it for radio, who's in it for print. The point of the pool is just that 30 reporters can't go with the president wherever he goes.

What's different, though, is they're adding people in, and so you'll go in and there are people from right-leaning broadcast or outlets that are included in addition to the regular pool. The main difference and one that I disagree with is blocking the Associated Press from being part of that pool. Typically, they would go in every single day with the wires and they have not let them in as they're in their court fight. The AP is suing Trump changes the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. They did not identify that, and my question, as I asked at the briefing when this all happened, was, it's retaliatory in nature.

Karoline Leavitt: We reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office, and you all have credentials to be here, including the Associated Press, who is in this briefing room today.

Kaitlan Collins: Isn't it retaliatory in nature? Is the argument because the reason that the AP was barred, which they said was because they're not using the phrase Gulf of America, they're using Gulf of Mexico in line with their standards, and so the question here is, is this setting a precedent that this White House will retaliate against reporters who don't use the language that you guys believe reporters should use? How does that align with the First Amendment commitment that you were just talking about?

Karoline Leavitt: I was there--

Kaitlan Collins: I was in the briefing yesterday and the Associated Press reporter who was in there got a question, and so it's not a complete block on them. The question is really whether or not the White House has changed since then to where they now control the pool. That is the question here in terms of whether or not they are ultimately successful here.

Clare Malone: You've been pretty involved with that organization, right? The WHCA.

Kaitlan Collins: I was the president, technically.

Clare Malone: You were. Okay, you were.

Kaitlan Collins: It is a serious organization, and they don't play favorites. When I ran for president, it's a three-year term, I had to run a really competitive race, and what you do as part of that race that actually was really beneficial to me was you have to call hundreds of members of the WHCA and solicit their views, get their feedback. What do they not like? What do they like? It's a real race.

I have a newfound respect for politicians, which I don't generally say, after running it because it was really difficult, and so this would have been my year to be the president. I moved to New York for two years and so I had to relinquish the role, unfortunately, but the WHCA is not playing favorites or not blocking certain outlets. They just take it really seriously because the jobs of being in the pool are very serious. You could be in the pool on a day like 9/11. You could be in the pool on a day that there's an attempted assassination.

A lot of the days it's boring and you're just kind of hanging out in a band, but you have to be ready for those moments and you have to be ready to deliver for the rest of the press corps and the American people in that front, and so it's an incredibly serious position. It's not just you're getting time in the Oval Office. It has very serious responsibilities to it. I love the White House press corps. I feel like professionally I grew up with them because I've been part of it since I was 25 years old, and I just I see how hard those people work and how they really are just trying to get answers and do their jobs, and so I have just a huge respect and appreciation for all of them.

Clare Malone: Interviews for print and for broadcast are so different. The modes of them are so different in many ways, and I'm curious how you think about fact checking in real time. Is it truly possible or reasonable to expect that you can fact check everything someone says in your interview on air?

Kaitlan Collins: You have to fact check, and I think you have to do it in a way that doesn't derail your interview. What do they typically say? Is it true? How can we correct whatever it is, but also continue with the interview? We want to make sure that it's going in the direction that we thought about and that we think is the best use of our viewers' time. If someone I know is going to say something, because a lot of times politicians say the same thing over and over again, and I'll try to either correct it and press them on it if they've never been pressed on it, or if it's something that's obviously false but is them kind of deflecting because they don't answer the question that I did ask, we'll correct it and then return to the question.

You're dealing with this and it's happening in real time, you don't always know what they're going to say, and you've got a compressed timeframe. You don't have 20 or 30 minutes, sometimes I go a little longer than my team would like and they're telling me to wrap and I just keep going, but I think you have to do it because some people are watching and they don't know that that's not true, and you've got to correct that and make sure that you're adhering to that.

Clare Malone: You hosted a CNN town hall with Trump during his reelection campaign, this was in 2023, and there's a moment when he calls you a nasty person.

Kaitlan Collins: That's the question that investigators have, I think, is why you held onto those documents when you knew the federal government was seeking them and then had given you a subpoena to return them.

Donald Trump: Are you ready? Are you ready? Can I talk?

Kaitlan Collins: Yes. What's the answer?

Donald Trump: Do you mind? Do you mind?

Kaitlan Collins: I would like for you to answer the question.

Donald Trump: Okay. It's very simple to answer.

Kaitlan Collins: That's why I asked it.

Donald Trump: It's very simple to. You're a nasty person, I will tell you.

[laughter]

Clare Malone: I'm curious for your reaction in that moment, both as a person that's happening to, and also as a person who's hosting a live television program.

Kaitlan Collins: Trump had not done a real interview with a non-friendly outlet, I don't think, since he had left office on camera. I think he'd done a lot of book interviews, but he hadn't done anything like that, and so people had not seen Trump in a while, and I think also the Republican audience, it was Republican and Republican-leaning independents in New Hampshire, they were really friendly and receptive to him. I think that was actually really prescient because he went on to win the nomination and then the election, and we saw the numbers of that.

I actually thought it was a really useful night because it was kind of a glimpse, if you were paying attention then, into what was to come. We asked him about January 6th and classified documents, two subjects that I knew he did not want to talk about. It's kind of one of those moments where the question is more important and not letting yourself get turned off from what you're trying to ask or distracted, and so that was my intent going into it, and I really didn't have a personal reaction to it. It was just, "Okay, he's not answering the question," was really the thought going through my mind.

Clare Malone: I'm curious for your take on what the best way for TV news outlets to cover Trump, do we still not have a clear answer a decade later?

Kaitlan Collins: I think we've gotten a lot better actually at covering Trump. When I was preparing for that town hall, I watched maybe five or six town halls that Trump did in 2016. I watched a bunch of interviews that he did when he was in office in his first term, and if you go back and watch those town halls or those early interviews, the tone is so different and the approach is so different. I think part of it was a lot of people did not take him seriously and did not believe that he had the political power that we now his biggest critics will acknowledge that he has.

Talk to any Democrat and they'll acknowledge Trump has the firmest grip on the Republican Party that anyone has had in decades. I think right now how people are covering his second term in the last eight weeks so far in terms of fact checking his speeches, how people ask questions, and just how they conduct that, I do think maybe it's not perfect. I would never say that. I think we can always do better, but I do think that people have gotten much better at covering him.

Clare Malone: You got your start at Tucker Carlson's new site, The Daily Caller. How were you imagining your career at that time?

Kaitlan Collins: Certainly did not think that it would be where it is now. Someone actually sent me a picture the other day from 2016 when we were in The Daily Caller newsroom, and it was just so funny to go back and look and like one, I just look so young, but also just to think of all the things that I've reported on and experienced since then and grown so much as a reporter, it is remarkable to look at. It's around this time eight years ago that I got my job at CNN, so I'm also kind of more reflective in that sense as well.

Also I was on the campaign trail in 2016 with The Daily Caller, and we would go out, Tucker thought it was important for us to go to caucuses and primaries and to see all that stuff up close, which I had never done before. I think I was 24 or 23 at the time. That was actually really helpful to me because when I started covering Trump, I had just a better understanding of that orbit around him and the people that were surrounding themselves with him now and what that looked like, and it actually has been really beneficial to me, I think, as I've been covering him for the last eight years.

Clare Malone: The right-wing ecosystem in media is in some ways so much more hardcore and hard right than it was 10 years ago, and Tucker in particular, I think exemplifies that. I'm curious what you make of his career arc over the past decade.

Kaitlan Collins: On just the right in general, I think they're emboldened by Trump's win. Tucker, obviously, was running The Daily Caller when I was there. He worked at Fox, but he didn't have a primetime show and wasn't the king of cable as he became and had TV that the White House felt was must see television because whatever he was talking about that night in his monologue, Trump would likely be talking about the next day. That's what I heard from senior staff in the White House the last time.

He is someone who has worked at every cable outlet, Fox, CNN, and MSNBC throughout his career, and now is in this moment using his influence in a different way. I think that is something that I've been watching as well with Trump is his moving away from the traditional kind of Rupert Murdoch-esque level of influence to the Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, more right-wing podcasters kind of level of influence.

We saw that during the campaign, which I thought was fascinating because I think if Rupert Murdoch had called Trump, as he did this time in 2016 and said, "You should pick this person as your vice president," Trump probably would have picked them. He did that this time and said, "You should pick Doug Burgum," I think, maybe not explicitly, but this is what we were told, and Trump went with JD Vance, and I just thought that really said a lot about who Trump is listening to and how that landscape shift has even made it into his inner circle.

Clare Malone: What was that transition like from explicit right-wing media to CNN brands itself as neutral. I'm curious what that was like.

Kaitlan Collins: I was nervous less because the ideology, because I'm not ideological. I've always been a reporter and that has always been kind of my driving force, and CNN is also just massive, but so quickly I realized these people only are interested in what I'm reporting. They don't care where I came from. They're like, "How can you use that in your sources to bring scoops here and to get reporting and to do a really good live shot?" That was actually really refreshing to me because I was bracing for people to maybe treat me differently. When I started at CNN, and I remember like the announcement, people were like, "What?" Just within weeks of starting at CNN, I realized how helpful it was and that the sheer size of it was big, but also the resources were really helpful.

Clare Malone: Do you feel like your sourcing relationships with people on the right changed when you got to CNN?

Kaitlan Collins: No, because I think actually it helped because they felt from their view, they had someone who kind of understood them-

Clare Malone: A bigger platform.

Kaitlan Collins: -that worked at CNN and maybe they didn't have a lot of relationships with people there, and also in the Trump White House, the front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Journal and cable news is where his attention goes, and so people would bring stuff to TV reporters because they wanted to get it on TV.

Clare Malone: You just described yourself as apolitical and you've done it before, you've said, and I'm quoting here, "It's not like I have a point of view of what's right and what's wrong, what I think is bipartisan and doesn't have a political lens to it." I'm curious, do you really hold no political opinions, or do you just avoid them for the sake of objectivity?

Kaitlan Collins: I'm still human, obviously. I have lived experiences and thoughts and views on things, but I don't think that I have strong ideological opinions when I go into a briefing or a press conference on certain things, and what I want to do is, here's the reporting, here it is, and this is by apolitical and not biased. That doesn't mean that you're just saying it very mundane and straightforward. I'm saying here's the context and here's if you're being bullshitted, here's the answer that to that, and you take with that what you will. You form your own opinion off of that.

Clare Malone: You're in regular communication with a lot of the same people Trump is. Your show is called The Source. I think it tips to that nature of reporting. How do you maintain those relationships, leverage those conversations into something useful to be reported when the administration is so publicly hostile towards media, when there's a little bit of, like, a sideshow that feeds social media about bashing reporters? Is it different behind the scenes with people?

Kaitlan Collins: Certainly it's a very different operating environment than, I think, covering Biden or covering any other president, because they're much more in your face and will publicly say whatever, but I think as you're approaching that, when you have these personal relationships with people, and a lot of them, again, I've known and reported on for eight years now, my perception is they're much more hostile publicly than they are privately, and I think that speaks to Trump himself.

He is that way as well. He's very critical publicly, but if he's doing it off the record or he'll come back to talk to the media, his view is different and his attitude is different. Now, does that mean they love us and they're telling us everything behind the scenes? No. A lot of what you're doing as a reporting reporter is trying to discern what's real, what's someone trying to knife somebody else? What's the most accurate aversion of events that happened behind closed doors?

Clare Malone: Trump criticized you for asking why he was blaming DEI for the fatal DC plane crash earlier this year.

Kaitlan Collins: Don't you think you're getting ahead of the investigation right now?

Donald Trump: I don't think so at all. I don't think were the names of the people? You mean the names of the people that are on the plane? You think that's going to make a difference?

Kaitlan Collins: Does it comfort their families to hear you blame DEI policies?

Donald Trump: They are a group of people that have lost their lives. If you want a list of the names, we can give you that. We'll be giving that very soon. We're in coordination with American Airlines. We're in coordination very strongly, obviously, with the military, but I think that's not a very smart question. I'm surprised coming from you.

Kaitlan Collins: Are you blaming [crosstalk]

Donald Trump: Please.

Clare Malone: What do you do when the president or the press secretary tries to make you specifically look biased against him?

Kaitlan Collins: That collision happened right before my show, and so we were the first show to cover it, really getting an understanding. That was when we found out that there were a lot of humans on board and probably none of them were alive, and we stayed on air till 2:00 AM that morning covering it. I got home, I woke up, and Trump was calling a press conference, and so people's bodies were still being pulled out of the river, and a lot of their loved ones that I had been talking to or texting with, they were still very much in the middle of that.

For Trump to come out and immediately start blaming something when the investigation was hours old, I think those are moments where you have to have real clarity as a reporter of what are the people watching this feeling and what is important to be called out and say what everyone's thinking, and that was what I thought I did in that moment. As far as Trump I think he's someone who seeks the validation of the press as much as he criticizes them publicly, and so it doesn't really bother me when he gets upset at my question because our job is to ask the questions. He can respond however he wants to respond. That is his prerogative, and it shouldn't influence really what you're asking or how you're asking it, in my view.

Clare Malone: Many outlets, including CNN, have seen layoffs. This is a little bit in the same point, but how does CNN stay relevant, and how do you stay relevant in a time when there's a lot of talk about linear television falling apart, let alone with the political environment? How do you think through that changing medium?

Kaitlan Collins: Yes, I don't think it's falling apart just yet. I think people, their habits and attitudes are changing in terms of how they get their news. When there's a debate, when a war breaks out, when there's a plane crash, when there's something like that, or federal workers are being fired by the hundreds and thousands, people do tune in, and they want to watch that, but I do think people are changing their habits.

I see this because I have a little brother who's 21, and he watches CNN on his phone, or he'll see my Instagram videos with my reporting from that day or my tweets, and that's how he gets the news. He's not watching the show every single night. I think it's like just meeting people where they are, and I think it's our bosses' jobs to figure that out and how we get there. Luckily, it's not my job, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I think to adapt is natural.

Clare Malone: Kaitlan, thank you so much for coming on.

Kaitlan Collins: Thank you for having me.

Clare Malone: You can see Kaitlan Collins weeknights on CNN's The Source. She's the network's chief White House correspondent, and I'm Clare Malone, a staff writer at The New Yorker.

[music]

 

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