President Donald Trump called CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins a “low-IQ person” to her face, and she waited until her own show to answer him with videotape rather than a comeback.
The exchange erupted during a media call outside the White House on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, as Trump prepared to fly to South Carolina for a rally for Senate candidate Darline Graham, the sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. Collins, 34, had asked the 80-year-old president what Graham told him about his decision to waive sanctions on Russia that her brother fought for.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a dummy. You’re a low-IQ person. You’re a dummy, and you work for CNN,” Trump snapped.
The Question That Set Him Off
Collins never got an answer about Graham. Trump instead tied the waiver to the release of Stephen Hubbard, 74, a teacher originally from Michigan who had been held in Russian detention since 2022 after being jailed for allegedly fighting on behalf of Ukraine. When Collins reminded him that he had said he gave nothing up for that release, Trump replied that without the waiver, Hubbard would not be coming home. She pressed again: so he did give something?
That is when he called CNN fake news, then reached for the dummy line. Trump also argued that the United States was closer to a deal than it had been in a long time, and that nobody imposes sanctions in the middle of delicate negotiations, he told reporters, adding that Collins should use her head. He had a word for ABC News White House correspondent Karen Travers in the same call, too, dismissing her as a “stupid person.”
Collins posted the video to X afterward, noting that the president was directly connecting the sanctions waiver to Hubbard’s freedom even while insisting he had handed Russian President Vladimir Putin nothing.
Even His Own Candidate Disagrees
Hours later, on the Wednesday, Oct. 21 broadcast of “The Source,” Collins rolled the unedited clip of the whole encounter. She skipped the personal tit-for-tat entirely and stuck to the questions she asked and the non-answers she got.
“Of course, the reality is, even the candidate that the president is campaigning for tonight has disagreed with his decision to lift those Russia sanctions,” Collins said.
Then she played the proof. Speaking on Saturday, Oct. 17, Graham said she would personally keep the squeeze on Moscow to end the war and bring gas prices down, “because I don’t trust Putin and I don’t trust Russia.” Collins added that Trump himself urged Graham to run three months ago, to honor the legacy of her beloved brother Lindsey.
The Late Senator’s Own Warning
The sanctions Trump waived on Friday, Oct. 16, were part of a new law named for Lindsey Graham as a tribute and as a nod to his longstanding concerns about Russia. If the South Carolina Senate race is about honoring that legacy, Collins said, viewers should hear what the man who held the seat for decades thought of world leaders cutting deals for Russian oil.
She cued up two clips. In footage from October 2025, the senator said he understood the appeal of discounted Russian crude but could not understand buying it knowing the proceeds would be used to kill innocent people and take land by force. In May 2025, he warned against fueling the flames of a bloodbath by buying cheap oil from a despot with impunity.
Then Came the Truth Social Tirade
Trump was not finished. In a late-night post on Truth Social, he called Collins “very dumb and unhappy,” branded her panel segments “fiction and lies,” mocked CNN’s ratings and accused her of a “Trump addiction.”
None of it is new territory for the two of them. He has complained that she doesn’t smile enough, and last month he called her a “third-rate” reporter and a “truly unhappy person.” He has gone after her at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, during confrontations at the United Nations General Assembly, and in an Oval Office media availability where he labeled her “the worst reporter.”
The friction extends well past one anchor. Trump previously barred reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House press pool; a federal judge temporarily blocked that ban, though restrictions on access continued, including keeping CNN off his travel to Texas and Oklahoma. This latest blowup landed just weeks before the 2026 midterm elections — and with the president’s own South Carolina candidate already on the record against the policy that started it.