Donald Trump spotted CNN’s Kaitlan Collins at his Ohio rally Saturday night — and it didn’t take long for a campaign speech to turn into another public attack on one of the reporters he has repeatedly targeted.
Trump was speaking in Vandalia, Ohio, while campaigning for Republican candidates ahead of the November midterms when he turned his attention toward the press section.
“Our nation is doing better now than ever before, and the fake news like CNN sitting right there, the fake news doesn’t want to write about it,” Trump said, pointing toward the back of the room.
The response was immediate.
The crowd began booing CNN, giving thumbs-down gestures and eventually breaking into chants of “F*ck CNN.”
Trump stopped speaking and allowed the reaction to continue.
He smiled, gave the crowd a thumbs-up and gestured toward the CNN area before turning his attention specifically to Collins.
“She’s such an unhappy person, you know?” Trump said.
“A young, nice person, but she never, never smiles. She’s a very unhappy person.”
It was another remarkably personal attack on a journalist Trump has repeatedly singled out — and another appearance of an insult he has now used against Collins multiple times.
Earlier this year, when Collins questioned Trump in the Oval Office about survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, Trump responded by attacking her personally and asking why she never smiled.
Collins immediately brought the conversation back to the subject of her question.
“Well, I’m asking you about survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, Mr. President,” she replied.
Trump returned to essentially the same attack in his recent TIME interview, describing Collins as “crazy,” “very average” and “the most unhappy young person” he had ever seen.
Saturday night, he took that feud directly to a campaign crowd.
But Collins and CNN were hardly the only targets during Trump’s Ohio appearance.
Trump used the rally to campaign for Republican Sen. Jon Husted and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy while urging his supporters to turn out in November.
And his language became considerably more vulgar as he predicted what Republicans would do to Democrats on Election Day.
“They’re in for a big surprise,” Trump told the crowd.
“It’s very simple: You gotta get out and vote. You gotta get out. You gotta vote for these guys.”
“If you do that, we’re gonna win and we’re gonna win big.”
Then came the line that quickly spread beyond the rally.
“And we’re gonna shove it up their a**, okay?”
The crowd erupted.
Trump also pleaded with his supporters to approach the midterms as though he personally were running.
“If you don’t mind, please pretend that I’m on the ballot,” he said.
The Collins attack and the vulgar midterm declaration were separate moments during the speech — an important distinction, since Trump’s “shove it” remark was aimed at his political opponents, not at Collins.
But together they captured the combative tone of the night.
Trump wasn’t simply criticizing CNN’s coverage.
He pointed toward the network’s presence inside the venue, watched as thousands of his supporters turned their anger toward it, and then personally singled out Collins while the reaction continued.
For Collins, it was another confrontation in a feud that has followed her from the Oval Office to Trump interviews and now directly onto the campaign trail.
And once again, she didn’t have to ask Trump a question to become part of his speech.
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