Caitlin Collins

speaker

180 appearances 14 recordings 10 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard 13 Feb

Caitlin Collins’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 2.

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The New Yorker Radio Hour · Kaitlan Collins Is Not “Nasty”; She’s Just Doing Her Job · 21 Mar 2025 podcast

I mean, these are not, and a lot of the days it's boring and you're just kind of hanging out in a van, but you have to be ready for those moments and you have to be ready to deliver for those moments. the rest of the press corps and the American people in that front. And so it's an incredibly serious position. It's not just you're getting time in the Oval Office.

It has very serious responsibilities to it. You know, I love the White House press corps. I feel like professionally I grew up with them because I've been part of it since I was 25 years old. And I just, you know, I see how hard those people work and how they really are just trying to get answers and do their jobs. And so, you know, I have just a huge respect and appreciation for all of them.

you have to fact check. And I think you have to do it in a way that doesn't derail your interview. What do they typically say? Is it true? And how can we correct whatever it is, but also continue with the interview? And so we want to make sure that it's going in the direction that we thought about and that we think is the best use of our viewers' time.

If someone I know is going to say something, because a lot of times politicians say the same thing over and over again, and I'll try to either correct it and press them on it if they've never been pressed on it, or if it's something that's obviously false, but is them kind of deflecting because they don't answer the question that I did ask, we'll correct it and then return to the question.

But you're dealing with this and it's happening in real time. You don't always know what they're going to say. And you've got a compressed time frame. You know, you don't have 20 or 30 minutes. Sometimes I go a little longer than my team would like. They're telling me to wrap and I just keep going.

But I think you have to do it because some people are watching and they don't know that that's not true. And you've got to correct that and make sure that you're adhering to that. Yeah.

The question that investigators have, I think, is why you held on to those documents when you knew the federal government was seeking them and then had given you a subpoena to return them. Are you ready?

Yeah, what's the answer?

I would like for you to answer the question. Okay, it's very simple to answer. That's why I asked it.

Trump had not done a real interview with a non-friendly outlet. I don't think since he had left office and so on camera. I think he'd done a lot of book interviews, but he hadn't done anything like that. And so people had not seen Trump in a while. And I think also the Republican audience, it was Republican and Republican-leaning independents in New Hampshire.

They were really friendly and receptive to him. I think that was actually really prescient because he went on to win the nomination and then the election. And we saw the numbers of that. And so I actually thought it was a really useful night because it was kind of a glimpse, if you were paying attention then, into what was to come. We asked him about January 6th.

and classified documents, two subjects that I knew he did not want to talk about. It's kind of one of those moments where the question is more important and not letting yourself get, you know, turned off from what you're trying to ask or distracted. And so that was my intent going into it. And I really didn't have a personal reaction to it.

It was just, okay, he's not answering the question, was really the thought going through my mind. Yeah.

I think we've gotten a lot better actually at covering Trump. When I was preparing for that town hall, I watched maybe five or six town halls that Trump did in 2016. Yeah.

Did not believe that he he had the political power that we now, you know, his biggest critics will acknowledge that he has talked to any Democrat and they'll acknowledge Trump has the firmest grip on the Republican Party that anyone has had in decades. I think right now how people are covering his second term in the last eight weeks so far in terms of.

fact-checking his speeches, how people ask questions, and just how they conduct that. I do think maybe it's not perfect. I would never say that. I think we can always do better. But I do think that people have gotten much better at covering him.

I certainly did not think that it would be where it is now. Someone actually sent me a picture the other day from, like, 2016 when we were in The Daily Caller newsroom. And it was just so funny to go back and look at, like, one, I just look so young, but also just to think of all the things that I've...

reported on and experienced since then and grown so much as a reporter is remarkable to look at. And it's around this time, eight years ago, that I got my job at CNN. So I'm also kind of more reflective in that sense as well. But also I was on the campaign trail in 2016 with The Daily Caller and we would go out.

Tucker thought it was important for us to go to caucuses and primaries and to kind of see all that stuff up close, which I had never done before. And so I think I was 24 or 23 at the time.

And so that was actually really helpful to me because when I started covering Trump, I had just a better understanding of that orbit around him and the people that were surrounding themselves with him now and what that looked like. And it actually has been really beneficial to me, I think, as I've been covering him for the last eight years. Yeah.

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