President Donald Trump used a wide-ranging Time magazine interview to launch yet another personal attack on CNN's Kaitlan Collins — then veered into an extended, unprompted defense of his reception at recent golf outings.
Pressed on his decision to restrict media access to MS NOW, Politico and CNN, Trump pivoted to grievances about press coverage generally before zeroing in on Collins.
"I don't think anybody should be forced to bear fake news, constantly bad stories, because I've done great things," he told Time. "I never get good press. I never get fair press. Doesn't have to be good. All it has to be is fair. So at a certain point, you say, 'What's the purpose of like this crazy Kaitlan Collins?' She's a very average person. She's the most unhappy young person I've ever seen."
Trump then insisted, out of the blue, that he's being misrepresented as unpopular at public appearances.
"If I did something spectacular by any standard, and they would write about it, they will only write badly," he complained. "Sometimes I'm amazed at how they can — you know, yesterday I got tremendous applause from massive crowds that came to Duncan. And I said to the people, 'Don't feel bad tomorrow when you read that I got booed out of the place.' I didn't get booed out of the place."
He kept going, describing stops in Tennessee and a golf event in Chicago.
"I went to Tennessee. The crowd went wild," he said. "I went to, yesterday, to Chicago. Got the big golf tent. President's coming. The crowd went absolutely wild... There was no negative number. Did anybody write anything negative about it? Check it out."
The tangent came as Time was attempting to steer the conversation toward the ongoing war in Iran, underscoring a pattern Trump's critics have long flagged: a president who struggles to stay on message when his own press coverage is on the table.
