Donald J. Trump spent Friday night at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner doing what he does best: congratulating someone to their face and insulting them in the same breath.
Addressing CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, who was there to receive a WHCA award for her reporting, Trump offered his congratulations — then immediately clarified that he didn’t mean it. “It was all about me,” he told the room. “It’s a fake; she shouldn’t get the award.” From there, the President moved on to his next order of business: telling a woman to smile. That always lands well.
That alone would’ve been a fairly standard Trump bit. But he wasn’t done. Trump then informed Collins that he’d briefly mistaken her for someone else — someone who, in his telling, cost a beer company $35 billion. “I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship,” he said. “But then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can. It was Dylan Mulvaney.”
Oh, yes, a trans joke. What a jokey jokester this President is. Trump’s ‘jokes’ through his hour-long rant were largely met with silence.
“But I want to personally congratulate CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award,” he said. “It was all about me. It’s a fake. She shouldn’t get the award.”
“It was a fake, but I didn’t mind,” he continued. “I said, Kaitlan, congratulations. But it was fake. There’s no question about it.”
“But she’s a young, attractive woman,” he said. “She never smiles. “I said, Kaitlan, do you have a smile? Smile.”