Around 15 minutes to airtime, Kaitlan Collins got some breaking news out of the White House. Donald Trump’s team was seeking to clarify his remarks earlier that day regarding an executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members, the subject of yet another court fight early in his presidency.
Collins, wearing a vibrant fuchsia suit and pointed-toe nude pumps, read the White House statement aloud at CNN’s Hudson Yards studios, indicating to her production team to quickly integrate it into the top of that evening’s show. CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, who was seated at a nearby table, preparing to offer his thoughts on the developments for viewers, quipped that the Trump administration’s actions were “straight out of Veep.” Moments later, the crew was counting down, and Collins was on air, opening her 9 p.m. show with her signature line “straight from the source tonight” and the news that Trump was claiming he “didn’t sign what might be his most controversial order yet.”
Such is life in a Trump news cycle, which Collins, 33, has been steeped in now for nearly a decade. After covering Trump’s 2016 campaign and his early days at the White House for the conservative Daily Caller, Collins decamped to CNN and emerged as one of cable network’s standout correspondents during the first term. Collins, just a few years out of the University of Alabama, showed remarkable composure in challenging Trump during those years and dealing with his “fake news” retorts. Jeff Zucker, the former CNN CEO who hired Collins, suggests she may be “the last great star that cable news produces.”
As the TV news industry contracts, and bloated salaries for star anchors are looking like a thing of the past, Collins’s multiplatform prowess—breaking news online, doing live hits throughout the day, anchoring at night, and sharing vertical videos outside the White House on Instagram—certainly looks like a model for a next-generation cable news star. Collins, who moved to New York to cohost the short-lived CNN This Morning, has lately been anchoring The Source from Washington DC in order to perform her duties as a prime-time anchor and as CNN’s recently named chief White House correspondent.
It’s in the latter role that she’s continued enduring Trump’s wrath, like when she interjected in a February press conference to ask if he trusts Russian president Vladimir Putin. “Nobody watches CNN anymore. Because they have no credibility,” he shot back. As Collins tells me, “Trump’s response was to criticize me and then criticize CNN, even though it was a totally legitimate question,” she says, “which I think is a distraction technique.” More recently, Trump snapped at Collins as she pressed him on Signalgate: “Excuse me, I didn’t pick you.”
Despite public clashes with the 45th and 47th president—or, partly, because of them?—CNN executives have kept Collins front-and-center in the Trump era. Chris Licht, who briefly succeeded Zucker, assigned Collins to moderate an infamous Trump town hall in 2023, while current chief Mark Thompson has tasked her with covering the second term. “Kaitlan is not just a brilliant prime-time anchor but one of our very best reporters—fair, well-sourced, and not afraid to stand up to anybody,” Thompson says.
Collins recalls the CNN boss telling her that she’d be returning to the White House after the November election.
“I was like, ‘Oh, for 100 days or something?’” Collins had asked.
“No,” Thompson replied. “Four years.”
Photograph by Krista Schlueter.
I met Collins on an absurdly windy day in March for lunch at Locanda Verde, steps away from CNN’s Hudson Yards headquarters. Walking into the restaurant, I looked as though I just went skydiving. When Collins appeared, however—in a chic denim set, paired with a sage green Bottega Veneta woven leather bag—not a single strand of hair was out of place from her signature shiny blowout, which was tucked behind slim tortoise shell Celine sunglasses perched on top of her head. Not only that, but she told me that before she flew in from DC that morning, she had already worked out.
Collins acknowledges her “crazy” schedule, which includes typically boarding a 9 a.m. train for Washington on Monday in the event of an afternoon White House daily briefing. “I like to just be there because even if there’s nothing on the schedule, something will inevitably happen,” Collins says, adding that “the worst thing that would happen is me not being there.” She spends weekdays reporting from the White House, before heading in the evening to CNN’s Washington bureau to anchor The Source. “When I’m leaving the White House, I have this head fake where I feel like I’m leaving work, like I’m done, and then I’m like, wait, I’m going to my other job,” she says.
