A question about Christmas toys set off the latest skirmish between the Trump White House and CNN's Kaitlan Collins. During Thursday's briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt was pressed on why President Trump recently told parents to buy fewer toys for their children if, as he claims, the economy is strong, NJ.com reports. Collins asked how that message squared with Trump's upbeat portrait of economic conditions. Leavitt replied that Trump was urging Americans to buy domestically made products, arguing that tariffs had helped fuel US manufacturing and that "maybe you'll pay a dollar or two more" for better quality and to "[support] your fellow Americans."
Leavitt went on to assert that "every economic metric" shows improvement over the Biden years, citing 2.5% inflation, rising wages, and lower gas prices, and said Trump is "digging our country out of the economic hole that the previous administration put us in." Collins countered that grocery prices remain elevated and that signals about the broader economy are mixed, prompting a rapid-fire back-and-forth as multiple reporters tried to jump in. Leavitt closed the exchange by accusing Collins of accepting false claims from the prior administration and alleging that CNN wants to "push untrue narratives" about Trump. Collins later appeared on CNN to fact-check some of Leavitt's claims, and ran footage of the many times the network had, in fact, questioned Biden and his administration about inflation.
The clash spilled into a separate question on the bidding war for CNN's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. Leavitt said Trump believes CNN "would benefit from new ownership," citing what she called declining ratings, and she said her exchange with Collins was "evidence" of just that, the Hill reports. After the briefing, the official White House Rapid Response account escalated the criticism on X, calling Collins "not a journalist" and labeling her a partisan "mouthpiece."
Trump has recently targeted Collins personally as well. In a post last week on Truth Social, he misspelled her name while calling her "always Stupid and Nasty" and defending higher-than-expected costs for a new ballroom project, which he claimed she'd asked him about. Collins later noted on Instagram that the interview he appeared to reference had actually centered on his receipt of a FIFA Peace Prize while threatening military action against Venezuela.
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