Sarah Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary for President Donald Trump, was appalled by the president’s latest attack on CNN’s Kaitlan Collins at the Oval Office Wednesday, where he called her a “corrupt reporter” who never smiles.
“It is disgusting to watch him tell a woman that she needs to smile while doing her job. I’ve seen Kaitlan smile plenty of times, but when she’s asking someone a hard-hitting question, I don’t think that that means that she has to smile while doing it. And he brings it up time and time again,” Matthews, who worked during Trump’s first administration, said on Wednesday night’s “NewsNight.”
Matthews’ remarks come shortly after the president went on a tirade against CNN and Collins while discussing the why he decided to drop the Justice Department’s highly criticized $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
Nothing prompted Trump’s attack on Collins, who at the time did not ask a question yet, but despite that, he called the reporter out in front of the gaggle and slammed her “crooked as hell” outlet.
“CNN’s a very corrupt organization, but with a corrupt reporter standing right there, never smiles. She never — a young, beautiful woman, never smiles. I never see a smile off her face,” Trump said. “I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes, like she has hatred, because we have borders, because we have a strong military, because we cut our taxes, because we do things that everybody wanted.”
He later told Collins to “be quiet” and that she should “be ashamed of herself” after she pressed him on the fund.
Trump’s hit at Collins is one of multiple attacks he made against the reporter.
She addressed the incident to viewers later that night, claiming that the president appeared “clearly irritated” by questions related to the topic.
Matthews told “NewsNight” host Abby Phillip that Trump would go after Collins “more ferociously than any other reporter in that room” because “she’s the best at what she does.”
“I will say that during my time working as deputy press secretary in the first Trump administration, Kaitlan Collins was the one reporter that scared Kayleigh McEnany and President Trump the most,” Matthews said.
“There would be times where Kayleigh McEnany wouldn’t even call on Kaitlan Collins at press conferences, at press briefings, because she didn’t want to answer the questions, because Kaitlan Collins is a very, very good reporter,” she continued.
Matthews went on to condemn the president’s overall treatment of female journalists, recalling the incident on Air Force One where he told Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey, “Quiet, piggy.”
“So I wish that this wasn’t normalized, and that we weren’t desensitized to this type of behavior from the president, but it really is appalling, and I just want to give kudos to Kaitlan Collins,” Matthews concluded.