The CNN anchor President Donald Trump called a dummy and a low-IQ person waited until her own show that night to play the tape back for her viewers.

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, 34, had asked the president whether his decision to waive sweeping new sanctions on Russia was tied to the release of Stephen Hubbard, an American teacher detained there since 2022. Trump turned on her as he spoke to reporters outside the White House on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026.

He told Collins, “You don’t know anything, I mean, you’re fake news CNN.” He continued: “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a dummy. You’re a low-IQ person. You’re a dummy, and you work for CNN.”

The Waiver Question That Set Him Off

Before her question, Trump said he gave up nothing to secure the American’s return. Hubbard, 74, a teacher originally from Michigan, was imprisoned in Siberia or somewhere else in Russia, Trump said, and was coming home because of him. The waiver was necessary during the negotiations, he said, and Hubbard would not have been released otherwise.

Collins replied that his own description amounted to the administration giving something up in exchange. Trump rejected the premise of her question. “Use your head,” he said.

ABC News White House correspondent Karen Travers pressed him on the same subject soon afterward. Trump asked whether she was a stupid person and who she worked for. Travers answered that she was with ABC News. “You’re a stupid person. And by the way, your network is the worst of all,” he said.

The White House posted both clips on X, saying Trump “demolishes Fake News” alongside a crying-with-laughter emoji in the post about Collins and labeling Travers “another Faker.”

She Played the Tape Back

The rally Trump was flying to that night was where Collins’ question began. She wanted to know what Sen. Darline Graham had told him about lifting sanctions her brother had fought for. The South Carolina Republican was appointed in July to replace the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, and she is running for a full term. The measures are part of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, named for him and signed into law in September.

On that night’s episode of “The Source,” Collins played the footage of Trump going after her and Travers. The candidate he was campaigning for had broken with him on the sanctions, she told viewers. In the clip Collins aired, Darline Graham said she would choose to keep the pressure on Russia to end the war and bring gas prices down, because she does not trust Russia. The anchor also ran footage of the late senator and his October 2025 criticism of countries that buy cheap Russian oil.

Enforcing the sanctions provisions now would impede U.S. efforts to negotiate a durable peace between Ukraine and Russia, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement to the Daily Beast. Trump keeps the ability to use those authorities whenever he determines it advances national interests, she said.

From Whistleblowers to Golf Courses

Trump told correspondent Andrew Feinberg to “be careful” in the Oval Office that same week. Feinberg had asked why a new whistleblower program pays a 1 percent commission when a False Claims Act award can be at least 10 percent. Vice President JD Vance called it a “fundamentally dishonest question.” Feinberg then moved on to Trump’s golf courses, and the president asked whether he was “a sick person.”

Trump berated Reuters White House correspondent Jacob Bogage after stepping off Air Force One on Thursday, Oct. 29. Bogage asked about a weekend rally in Kansas that Trump had cancelled. “You’re not going to Kansas. That’s nothing to do with you being sick of traveling?” the reporter asked. Trump shot back: “Oh, you’re sick to ask that question. You are sick. Who are you with?” Trump explained the canceled trip in the same exchange. “I’m not going to Kansas because he’s doing very well,” he said, and added, “I don’t feel I have to go to Kansas. I’m going to Florida tomorrow, and I’ll do it if something else comes up.”

“I’m with Reuters, sir,” Bogage answered. Trump replied, “You are a sick guy. Reuters is terrible, by the way.” He then turned to the reporter’s appearance: “You’ve been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell!”

Barred From the Rose Garden

CNN made Collins its youngest chief White House correspondent in 2021, when she was 29, and she took the job again in November 2024 without giving up her anchor chair. Fights over her access are not new. The White House barred her from a Rose Garden event in July 2018 after she asked Trump about his former attorney Michael Cohen.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico were the targets of a more recent move by Trump to bar them from the White House. A federal judge temporarily blocked the restrictions and ordered the outlets’ access restored.

Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday, Oct. 24, three days after calling Collins a dummy: “Although I may move the Fake News to a less obnoxious location, the old swimming pool will never be brought back.” With that post he rejected a report claiming he planned to tear out the briefing room and bring back the pool underneath it.