“That’s the president of the United States: a nearly 80-year-old man, who has no problem commenting on her physical appearance and telling her she needs to smile.”

Anderson Cooper calls out Trump after his latest attack on CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: ‘That doesn’t happen to men’

“That's the president of the United States: a nearly 80-year-old man, who has no problem commenting on her physical appearance and telling her she needs to smile.”

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and NME.

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June 4, 2026 4:34 p.m. ET

Anderson Cooper; Donald Trump; Kaitlan Collins. Credit:

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty; Kevin Dietsch/Getty; Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty

- Anderson Cooper is defending CNN journalist Kaitlan Collins after Donald Trump criticized her once again.

- The president called Collins a "young, beautiful woman" who "never smiles" and looks at him "with hatred in her eyes."

- “That's the president of the United States: a nearly 80-year-old man, who has no problem commenting on her physical appearance and telling her she needs to smile," Cooper said.

Anderson Cooper is standing up for fellow CNN journalist Kaitlan Collins after Donald Trump lashed out at her once again.

The 79-year-old president criticized Collins and her physical appearance when speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, calling her a “corrupt reporter” as well as a “young, beautiful woman” who “never smiles” and looks at him “with hatred in her eyes.”

Cooper called Trump’s remarks “completely unwarranted” on his show that same evening, adding, “That's the president of the United States: a nearly 80-year-old man, who has no problem commenting on her physical appearance and telling her she needs to smile.”

Kaitlan Collins and Anderson Cooper.

Kevin Mazur/Getty

“That doesn't happen to men. No one's ever said that to me in an office setting,” he continued. “She was there, like every other journalist doing her job, standing around with a bunch of non-smiling men, by the way, all behind her. I don’t know if you saw that.”

Cooper proceeded to play a montage of all the times Trump has chastised women reporters as president. Among the clips included was the former Trump Steaks founder’s Feb. 3 tirade against Collins after she asked him several questions about the Epstein files.

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“You are the worst reporter. CNN has no ratings because of people like you,” Trump said at the time. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face.”

It also featured several more incidents, including the time he told a Bloomberg reporter: “Quiet, piggy.”

Cooper was then joined by journalist Tara Palmeri to discuss Trump’s repeated behavior of belittling women. “I don’t know why I’m surprised by this. I shouldn’t be,” the host admitted. “But I just… It’s just bizarre that this is something that he does over and over again, and I think people do it to women all the time.”

Palmeri noted Trump is “objectifying” Collins and “using a misogynistic comment about her appearance to belittle her.”

“When Kaitlan Collins is standing there, she is a woman with agency, and she has a lot of power,” she said. “She represents the people of the United States of America, and she’s holding him to account by asking him questions in the Oval Office.”

She went on to argue that Trump “does not like that the vessel of a person who is asking them, those questions that challenge him, is a woman,” adding, “Because he's used to women being around him who are people pleasers, who are smilers, who are secretaries, who are cabinet secretaries, as we've seen from the various hearings that we've actually watched on TV and the deference that they show him.”

Watch Anderson discuss Trump's comments in the clip above.

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Source: “EW News”