Overview
- On Tuesday the president used Truth Social to call CNN’s Kaitlan Collins “very dumb and unhappy” and to deride New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman with personal insults while disputing a Times account about his 9/11 memorial plans.
- Collins’s remark drew directly from a CNN special edition of The Source she hosted that included commentary critical of Trump’s campaign spending and strategy, which the president cited as evidence the network airs “fiction and lies.”
- Trump demanded retractions from Haberman and New York Magazine over reporting that said he arranged to be represented in New York by the vice president at the World Trade Center ceremony, and the New York Times defended its account as based on multiple sources with knowledge of the planning.
- The posts continue a documented pattern of repeated, often personal attacks by the president on mainstream journalists, including earlier name‑calling, a jab at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and circulation of a doctored image of Collins.
- The renewed insults have so far drawn public defenses of reporting from outlets and no immediate formal responses from CNN or New York Magazine, and they raise the prospect of heightened press‑White House tensions ahead of the Republican National Convention and November’s midterm contests.