Here are the 6 most infamous times Donald Trump targeted CNN reporters
CNN's town hall is set to begin Wednesday night with Donald Trump despite the years the network spent being attacked by the former president.
Trump attacked specific correspondents in front of the cameras during press conferences, he encouraged his supporters to boo and abuse cameras and reporters at events in the back of the room, and posted images that showed him attacking CNN violently.
Here are the top 6 infamous times Trump went after CNN:
1. The fight video
In 2017, Trump's team found a video on Reddit showing him punching someone with "CNN" over their face. Trump's Homeland Security chief dismissed it and claimed that it's Trump that's really being mistreated.
2. "Let me run the country — you run CNN. ... You're a rude, terrible person."
In an exchange with Trump in 2018, White House correspondent Jim Acosta, who now has his own weekend show on the network, battled with Trump over the "migrant caravan" conspiracy Trump used to gin up fear before the midterm elections. Acosta told Trump the photos and videos he was pushing out weren't an "invasion" of the United States, they were people crossing into Mexico.
3. "Your record is so bad you ought to be ashamed of yourself"
While on a 2020 trip to New Delhi, Trump went off on Acosta again. The reporter asked about foreign election interference. "Trump’s new acting director of national intelligence quickly degenerated into a splatter of cross-talk once the president took aim at CNN’s credibility," Politico reported at the time.
The calm Acosta shot back: “Mr. President, I think our record on delivering the truth is a lot better than yours sometimes, if you don’t mind me saying."
“Let me tell you about your record. Your record is so bad you ought to be ashamed of yourself," Trump raged.
“I’m not ashamed of anything, and our organization’s not ashamed,” Acosta said.
Trump talked over him: “You probably have the worst record in the history of broadcasting.”
4. Kaitlan Collins gets banned from a press conference.
When it wasn't Acosta, it was often CNN's Kaitlan Collins, PBS News' Yamiche Alcindor or Urban Radio's April Ryan that drew Trump's ire.
In 2018, Collins was blocked from entering a press conference in the Rose Garden because she asked Trump about his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, and Vladimir Putin while serving as a pool reporter.
The pool reporter is the person nominated to cover a specific event for all interested news outlets. They ask their own questions but they can also get questions from colleagues to shout out. It's unclear whether the question was for Collins or someone else, but it infuriated Trump enough that she was called into the White house communications director's office and told she was out for asking "inappropriate" questions.
Her colleagues banded together and the network stepped up to fight back.
5. "Don't talk to me."
Another clash with Collins came in 2020 when she asked Trump about North Korean President Kim Jong Un’s health. It began with her asking if the two had been in contact.
“I don’t want to say. I won’t say that," Trump said. "We have a good relationship with North Korea — as good as you can have. I mean, we have a good relationship with North Korea. I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un and I hope he’s OK.”
Collins tried to ask a follow-up and that's when Trump struck, calling CNN “fake news.”
“No, that’s enough,” Trump bellowed. “The problem is, you don’t write the truth.”
Collins pressed him again.
“No, not CNN, please. I told you, CNN is fake news. Don’t talk to me," he snapped.
Collins was a frequent target, being asked at one point to move to the back of the room after that clash.
6. Where's Dr. Fauci?
As the Covid pandemic really began to spread quickly in April 2020, Acosta asked where Dr. Anthony Fauci was after the infectious diseases expert had briefed the press many times but was absent from an April 3 press conference. A source told Acosta at the time that Fauci was bumped at the last minute.
Trump snapped, saying every time Fauci wasn't there people ask him where he is and imply "there is a problem."
"We're doing great together," Trump said.
Acosta asked Trump about comments from then-Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in 2019, when he confessed he fears a pandemic of a flu that would break out.
Acosta asked who dropped the ball and if they had been preparing for it why then there weren't enough masks or medical equipment. Trump blamed Former President Barack Obama saying they didn't give the administration any of that when they left three years prior.
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