We Can't Let The Abuser-In-Chief Control the Narrative

We the people and fearless journalists must stand together. That includes confronting Trump's Epstein denials and the continuing lies of election fraud that he's shaping for the midterms.

CNN correspondent Kaitlin Collins was not taking it from Donald Trump. (Video screenshot)

Donald Trump is not going to the Super Bowl because, he says, “it’s too far away.” Uh-huh. He’s skipping the Super Bowl because he fears massive booing. He cannot stand to hear any criticism, which is a familiar characteristic of an extreme narcissist—one that’s grown worse with age and especially when surrounded by sycophants who never question his ideas and actions.

That’s why his exchanges with reporters—the closest we have to “real people” in his orbit—are so important. They are among the few opportunities that we have to see how he responds when his ideas and actions are tested.

Trump’s Oval Office exchange several days ago with Kaitlin Collins, CNN’s White House correspondent, was particularly telling. Much of the coverage about this has focused in broad terms on his abusive reaction, emphasizing his sexist complaint that she never smiles. It follows his pattern of abuse with other female reporters, such as when he said—as the cameras were rolling— “Quiet! Quiet, piggy.”

But I’d like to share with you the whole sequence of his exchange with Collins, a dogged reporter who refuses to let Trump off the hook. She was asking about the Epstein files, a topic that Trump desperately wants to avoid unless he can spin it to attack Democrats. (You can watch the exchange here.)

Collins: You talk about Democrats who are there [in the files]. Elon Musk is also in there. So is your Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, and correspondence that he had with him. Did you read those new files that were published by the Department of Justice?

Trump: No, I didn’t. I have a lot of things I’m doing. Lot of things, I don’t know. You mentioned two names. I’m sure they’re fine. I’m sure they’re fine. Otherwise, there would have been major headlines.

Collins: A lot of women who are survivors of Epstein are unhappy with the redactions that came out. Some of the entire interviews with witnesses are totally blacked out. Do you think they should be more transparent?

Trump: Well, they’re also unhappy that they released too much. You know, I heard that. And you’re telling me something else. Uh, I really think it’s time for the country to get onto something else. Now that nothing came out about me other than it was a conspiracy against me, literally, by Epstein and other people…

Collins: But what would you say to people who say they haven’t gotten justice, Mr. President?

Trump: …like healthcare or something that people care about. [He’s increasingly agitated.] Yeah, what did you say? Go ahead, CNN. You are so bad…

Collins: What would you say to survivors who say they haven’t gotten justice?

Trump: You are the worst reporter. No wonder CNN has no ratings because of people like you. [He turns to one of his sycophants off-camera] You know, she’s a young woman. [Turns back] I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile. I’ve known you for 10 years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face.”

Collins: I’m asking you about survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, Mr. President.

Trump: You know why you’re not smiling? Because you know you’re not telling the truth. You’re a very dishonest organization and they should be ashamed of you.

Collins: These are survivors, Mr. President.

First, let me say: Bravo, Caitlin. She demonstrated her skill here and her refusal to take it from the Abuser-in-Chief. (She also understood the urgency of continued questioning: A New York Times review this week identified 38,000 references to Trump, his wife Melania and Mar-a-Lago in 5,300 of the released files.)

It is fair to criticize many of the White House reporters for failing to stand up to Trump, to push back harder than they typically do. Some of the criticism also rightly focuses on the failure of the press corps to stand together and tell Trump to cut it out when he attacks one of their own.

But Collins admirably shows that she’s more than able to stand toe-to-toe with this nasty man. In doing so, she showcased Trump’s smarmy tactic of changing the subject when he doesn’t like the question. A lesser reporter would have been cowed or otherwise overwhelmed by Trump’s bulldozing style of attacking the questioner with personal insults or thinly veiled bigotry. In this case, Trump’s weakness was visible for all to see.

As Trump spins his web of lies

Here’s the thing: Trump’s tactics are not working. His latest poll numbers are plummeting. A strong majority of the public, including a large number of independents and even a growing sliver of Republicans, reject his deadly ICE operation and his overall job performance. A mid-January poll found that two-thirds of registered voters disapproved of his handling of the Epstein files, including 28 percent who voted for him in 2024.

Think his demand that we should all just move on from the evil found in these files—the rape, the pedophilia, the possible murder—will resonate? Don’t count on it.

As he doubles down—and he will—this downward spiral will accelerate, which is why reporters cannot let him off the hook when he lies and obfuscates and tries to change the subject. Similarly, it’s critical that every opponent of the regime continues to speak out and refuse to let him control the narrative.

Note his efforts this week to minimize his vindictive and dangerous role in driving the FBI raid in Georgia to seize ballots from the 2020 election. When a photograph revealed that Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence, was there, he lied that he didn’t know why.

“Why is Tulsi Gabbard there?” NBC News anchor Tom Llamas directly asked in a 49-minute interview Wednesday. He got typical obfuscation.

“I don’t know, but you know, uh, a lot of the cheating comes from, it’s international cheating,” Trump said. “You have people—they say—from China trying to, let me ask you, do you think China tries to influence our election?”

“We know that foreign governments try to influence a lot of things in this country,” Llamas replied, losing control of his initial question. “Well, therefore,” Trump confusingly answered, “she’s foreign governments.”

Trump wasn’t done: “If China or any of these countries are involved in our elections, that would bring her [Gabbard] into it. And everybody knows that Russia…turned out to be a hoax. It was Hunter Biden. It wasn’t Russia. Look, we have to have honest elections.”

All an overwhelmed Llamas could say was “yeah.” Then Trump revealed why he wanted those ballots: "If there was cheating, which there was, but if there was cheating, it should be found because we can’t let it happen again.”

We can’t let it happen again, he said, foreshadowing his desire to deny the voters’ will in the midterms.

This came the day after his long-time advisor Steve Bannon threatened that ICE agents would “surround the polls” in November. “We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again,” Bannon said on his podcast. “And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”

But Llamas didn’t push back against Trump’s threat. He was in a hurry to move on: “Mr. President, I have a few more important questions for you. That’s okay with you. Yeah?

“Sure,” a pleased Trump said.

We subsequently learned that Trump’s “I don’t know” was a bald-faced lie. Gabbard’s own letter to Congress Wednesday stated that she went to the raid at Trump’s instruction. “My presence was requested by the president and executed under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security,” Gabbard wrote, despite the fact that she has no domestic law enforcement authority.

Trump further sought to insulate himself from the raid yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast. Gabbard “took a lot of heat two days ago because she went in at Pam’s [Bondi] insistence,” Trump lied in front of religious and political leaders. “She went in and she looked at votes that wanted to be checked out from Georgia.”

Note the absence of a pronoun. Not that “I” wanted to be checked, just “votes that wanted to be checked.”

The opposition must be loud

We have to pay attention to the narrative Trump is pushing. Democrats are cheating and stealing elections. The director of national intelligence needs to know whether the Chinese or some other dangerous foreign actor are interfering with our democratic process (but please forget Russia’s actual role in 2016). His regime needs to seize control and “nationalize the elections” so that blue state election officials won’t steal a Republican victory in November.

We can expect that he and his regime will continue to escalate and expand this false narrative, especially as an overwhelming Democratic victory in the face of an increasingly despised Trump-led GOP grows more likely. Reporters, Democratic leaders and we the people must speak out loudly and say no to a pathological liar and an anti-democratic regime that will try its damnedest to deny the public’s will.

This truth-telling opposition needs to be active on all fronts—on social media, among friends and family, in street protests. And the louder that gets this year, the more Trump’s decline will accelerate as he struggles with his eventual fate of overwhelming loss.

Recall his trigger response to the Ford employee who yelled “pedophile protector” at him: Up came Trump’s middle finger and the mouthing of “F**k you” twice. His message to this brave man and every American that dares to question him could not be any clearer.

Trump may not be attending the Super Bowl, but we can only hope that he’ll attend other public events where he’ll hear the booing loud and clear. This may not change his insulated, narcissistic mind, but it will remind the majority of us that we are not alone—that we remain tethered to reality and can fight back against this sick trajectory.

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