President Donald Trump attacked CNN’s White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins during a Saturday morning rant on Truth Social in defense of the rising costs of his 90,000-square-foot ballroom.
“Caitlin Collin’s of Fake News CNN, always Stupid and Nasty, asked me why the new Ballroom was costing more money than originally thought one year ago,” Trump wrote. “I said because it is going to be double the size, and the quality of finishes and interiors has been brought to the highest level.”
Collins reported earlier this week that the cost of Trump’s ballroom has ballooned, and a new architect is now overseeing the project after the president clashed with the original. While the administration maintains the ballroom is under budget and will be paid for by private donors such as Apple, Amazon and Meta, questions of what those donors gave and what they are getting in return remain.
“FAKE NEWS CNN, and the guy who runs the whole corrupt operation that owns it, is one of the worst in the business,” Trump continued in his Saturday post. “Their ratings are so low that they’re not even counted or relevant anymore.MAGA!!!”
Trump has consistently railed against the media, and his attack on Collins adds to the pile of recent hostile remarks he’s explicitly made towards female journalists.
He called Katie Rogers of the New York Times “ugly, both inside and out,” after she co-authored a piece on the president’s health and aging. His most notorious shot was directed at Bloomberg’s veteran White House correspondent Catherine Lucey, whom he told, “Quiet, piggy,” while wagging his finger after she pressed him about the Jeffrey Epstein files.
The White House defended Trump in a statement, claiming “this reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way toward her colleagues on the plane.
“If you’re going to give it, you have to be able to take it,” the statement read.
