Breaking (Down the) News with Kaitlan Collins

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Hey, everybody.

It's Jon Stewart.

It's the Weekly Show podcast with Jon Stewart.

Welcome to the show.

I'm trying desperately not to push myself up out of my chair for the beginning.

For some reason, that's my set.

So now I'm going to, I'm,

you can't see this, but I'm slouching.

It's the first show of our second season, and I am beginning it on a slouch to try and prevent myself from lifting off the chair.

It is, it is Wednesday.

God knows what's going to be happening by Thursday.

Ukraine could have destroyed the rest of Russia's

nuclear-equipped planes.

It could have not.

This whole thing could be over.

I just have no damned idea.

But I will say the one thing that did catch my eye, and this is,

it almost seems like a

minor occurrence, but they're pulling the name off of the USS Harvey Milk.

And it just reminds me of what

this administration is and the priorities of this administration and the ridiculously just

petty and malicious way in which they go about.

I mean, for God's sakes,

they're removing the name.

Now, Harvey Milk, for those who don't know, was an activist for gay rights.

He was assassinated in San Francisco, along with the mayor of San Francisco, by, I think, a kind of a right-wing

nutbag who claimed that fast food had driven him insane.

And, you know, I think the guy's already, but he served like, I don't know, four years, five years, some shit like that.

But the guy was

in the military.

He was like a submarine, you know, he

and he was kicked out of the mail.

He got a less than honorable discharge out of the military because he was gay.

and fought for gay rights and was an important figure,

not just in that movement, but for people who wanted the military to represent the actual people of the country.

A military, I think, is always strongest when it is reflective of everyone that

it is protecting.

That's just,

it makes it a more representative and better

force.

And they just removed the name.

And not only did they remove the name for no fucking reason, they did it at the beginning of Pride Month, which is just, again, the dickishness is the point.

In what way, why would you do that other than

it's a move of hostility

and nothing else?

You know, oh, I'm going to break up with my significant other.

Oh, now?

No, no, no.

I'm going to wait for their birthday.

I'm going to wait until it can have the most shitty impact on all that.

And it's just one more disparity note on this

crew that can't be out of there fast enough it's just

uh

a constant stream of

uh hostile moves because of how persecuted they are that one of the ships in the entire u.s navy bore the name of someone who was an activist for gay rights that can't stand

Confederate soldiers?

No, no, no.

That's okay.

We can have that.

I mean, for God's sake, he, you know, they changed the name of fort bragg but bragg was a horrific uh confederate general that they didn't even like him and uh

they changed it to i think fort liberty something along those lines and he went and changed it back by finding another soldier happen happens to be like a brave soldier from world war ii also named bragg like this is what we're dealing with and and and i don't mean to keep uh harping on it's just one of those things i saw and i just thought god damn it

this is what we're gonna have to do it's it's been four months.

Jesus.

But speaking of,

on a different note, someone who is dealing with it directly, who has to be in, who faces down the torrent of these individuals and does it, I think, better than almost anybody out there right now.

And I am very pleased to have on Caitlin Collins.

Ladies and gentlemen.

What a day we have.

It's the first show of the new season, and we are joined by Caitlin Collins, CNN anchor, chief White House correspondent.

The show, the source with Caitlin Collins, it's weeknights at 9 p.m.

on CNN.

Caitlin!

I'm looking for a third job if you have any producer spots.

Are you the only one that does that?

Are you the only White House correspondent who does a nightly show?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, because it's insane.

It is insane.

You know, because I

took a small break, hiatus from the White House for two years when I was in New York.

But now that I'm back, you know, when you leave the White House, it's this big tall gate and you go through security.

And like before, when you would leave, it's like, okay, your day's over.

Like, yeah, you got to stay on the phone, but your job's done.

Now, when I'm leaving through the gate and like saying bye to the Secret Service guards, I'm like going to my second job.

I'm like, okay, job one done.

Now job two is about to begin.

And I'm like, you know,

it's a lot.

And you guys moved into a new studio.

Do they make you like also bring in the furniture and all that?

Are they, is this a budget situation where they're just making Caitlin Collins do all the work for everybody?

Yeah, my dad called me the night after we moved to the newsroom.

Our news set is in the newsroom instead of just a typical TV studio.

And he was like, where were you last night?

And I thought he meant that he couldn't find the show or he couldn't see it on TV.

And I was like, what do you mean?

I was at work.

And he's like, no, but where were you?

What was that?

He did understand.

I like that your dad is just like one of those bloggers on X who's just like, what's with the new studio, Caitlin?

Yeah, he's like, where's the old sign?

Can I I have the old sign?

And I was like, I was trying to explain to my dad, he's going to kill me if he hears this, that it's a digital sign.

It's not like a physical sign that's behind me with the logo.

But anyway, it was quite funny.

He wanted swag?

He wanted swag from the old Caitlin Collins show?

Yes, which,

you know, I'm going to get it for him.

You know, it's a

Father's Day surprise.

That's a very good daughter thing to do.

That's a lovely thing.

Father's Day is coming up, and you're going to get him the neon sign

of your old studio.

I like that.

He would like that.

It sounds insane, but my dad would find that adorable.

No,

he sounds like a good dude.

Where does he live?

My whole family lives in Alabama, which is where I'm from, born, raised, all that good stuff.

Where in Alabama?

Right outside Montgomery.

It's a city called Prattville.

Oh, how big is that?

That's like 38,000 people or so.

Everyone thinks I'm like from a one-horse, one-stoplight town, but it's actually a fully functioning city and

a great place to grow up.

I love it.

I was just there a few weeks ago.

Oh, that's nice.

You know, Alabama,

you know, people have the impression, it's got kind of a hot comedy scene.

Like Birmingham, one of the great cities to play,

you know, when you're touring and doing that kind of stuff.

Alabama's kind of a, the only problem I ever had in Alabama was there was one area, this is back when I was working at MTV, where it was in between Alabama and Florida, and they called it Florabama.

What's your, do you have a problem with that place?

Because I have said previously that like, if I ever get married, I want to get married at the Flora Bama because I love it so much.

And for people who don't know, it's there at Flora Bama is a bar that is on the Florida, Alabama state line.

It crosses them.

That's right.

And it used to be like a small package store kind of like shack type thing.

And now they've built it up into this massive bar.

And what I love about the Flora Bama is you can be there on a Saturday night, like listening to some cover band.

There's like, you know, underwear lining the walls and hanging from the ceilings.

And then on Sundays, they host church.

That is correct.

Yes.

They They host church on Sundays.

So you can go and go to the service, get a Bloody Mary while you're there.

It's great.

The only thing I remember about Florabama was everybody made it pretty clear that it was basically like being in international waters.

That Florida Bamba.

There's no laws.

When you were in this jurisdiction of this bar, it was like being on Silk Road.

That basically whatever happened there, lawlessness or otherwise,

your job as White House correspondent, when you used to do that job, what time do you get out?

Let's just go logistics for a little bit.

What time when you are a White House press correspondent, what's your day hours-wise?

I think it kind of depends on what your responsibilities are.

For a

TV reporter who is on cable that is covering the White House, you know, previously during Trump round one, as I call it, you know, we were on the clock probably till 10 or 10.30.

At night.

Yeah, because a lot of stuff happens at night, like depending on who's in office.

You know, you can always kind of determine any presidents, like, are they early or are they someone who trends later?

Obviously, Trump.

Trump is not a morning person.

Trump is kind of 24-7, though.

Like, but I was, I was, you know, looking at his, I check his truth social in the mornings.

I was looking at it today.

He posted three times between 2:15 and 2.45 a.m.

last night.

So, you know, about China and the Fed chair and, you know, what's happening on Capitol Hill.

Are those scheduled, or you think he's actually up?

No, I think he's up.

I think he's just, he doesn't sleep that much.

He sleeps like, you know, three, four hours a night.

You know, that breaks people.

I don't know if you know this, but that's, that's how Stalin used to break people.

He would, he would only let them sleep like three hours, four hours a night, and they would go insane.

Yeah.

Well, we wrote a whole story.

I was just thinking about this during the Middle East trip.

We wrote a story during his first term about how a lot of White House staff didn't love flying on Air Force One with him because on the way to a Middle East or a foreign trip, because he doesn't sleep on the plane.

And so they can't sleep on the plane because he's talking or, you know, wants to meet or have these conversations.

And so they're like land on the ground for like this six day slog and they haven't slept at all.

And it's, it's, I had one, one source who told me that the president sent someone to wake them up when they were sleeping because he wanted to talk to them about something.

And they were just kind of describing what it's like to be a staffer on Air Force One.

So this whole thing, we could have avoided this whole presidency if we had just gotten him a friend.

If we had just gotten him somebody to talk to.

This is all, this is, he should be the country's social director, not the president.

Like, it's just, when do you sleep?

If you're doing, if you're doing White House press corps duty and then you're doing your show and then you're going with him on a plane to the Middle East, when are you sleeping?

I don't, I definitely sleep more than he does.

I will say that.

I don't know.

I don't sleep a ton either as well, but I think it's just because, you know.

I don't like to miss anything and I'm always, you're always like kind of paying attention to what's going on.

And, you know, after the show ends at 10 p.m.

Eastern, I'm kind of still buzzing from like, you know, our interviews and what's been going on and still talking to people after the show.

And then, you know, you're up early in the morning to see what's going on.

But, but it's good.

And the schedule is crazy and it sounds, I think, insane.

But I think after covering Trump round one and then doing the nine o'clock for a few years before starting this, my expectations were totally clear about what the hours would be and how crazy it was going to be.

Let's talk about the cadence difference then because we talked about covering Trump once.

So then when Biden comes in, is it like all of a sudden you're on a resort

and Sandals resort?

Like nobody's bothering you.

Nobody,

what was the difference in terms of

how the pace of the day went or the rhythm of your entire job?

How did that shift?

Yeah.

And I covered the first two years of Biden.

And Trump was all I had ever known in terms of, he was the first president I covered, the first White House I covered.

So I never covered Obama or Bush.

So sorry.

But so though, so that was my expectation, you know, that like, yeah, you're at the White House and they say, hey, there's going to be a press conference in 30 minutes.

Like, get ready.

Right.

Meanwhile, I think at Biden's first press conference, they announced it like five days in advance.

Like, we knew so far in advance that it was happening.

And so, like, simple things like that were the biggest changes, I think, in terms of that.

But Biden was actually quite busy during the first year and two years in office because, one, COVID was still happening when he took office.

That was a huge thing for him, obviously, in terms of people actually getting vaccinated because they were starting to roll out.

And two, then Russia invaded Ukraine.

And that happened,

it was about 10.30 p.m.

Eastern when Russia first started attacking Ukraine.

I was at the White House when it broke out.

And so.

At 10.30 at night, you were still at the White House?

Yes, because we, you know, when there's certain things going on, you know, you kind of notice day.

Actually, the night Trump got COVID, I had stayed at the White House late for something working on some reporting.

And then was when we started to get word that a close aide to him had gotten COVID, which obviously then, you know, this was like a huge moment.

And so we actually stayed on air that morning, I think until 5 a.m.

We never left and just kept reporting and covering it.

And then, you know, at 5 a.m., you get home and you kind of like, you can't go to sleep at 5 o'clock in the morning when you've just been covering history and you're kind of just, your mind is still racing.

And,

you know, I mean, covering the White House is just, there is literally no job like it.

And you always have to be prepared that, that anything can happen.

Is it a job for, I would find for myself, I think I'm slightly neurotic.

So I would imagine that

those nights settle down, Collins.

Let's not slightly neurotic.

And I would imagine that I would constantly be thinking, oh, shit, I should have said boom, or I should have, are you replaying the day's events or are you working forward?

What What is your process?

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Where you been, Incogni?

Where you been all my life?

Because one of the things that I think suits you so well is you have a directness.

Like there's not a lot of wasted verbiage and things.

You're very clear about what you want to do.

You know, I'm down with Collins.

I think you're, I let, I'd say to them, let Collins ask the question.

Forget about going to these other idiots.

Just let Collins ask the questions.

That'll be fine.

But do you find yourself replaying

or more forward contingency planning?

What's what's your process?

I would never, ever compare myself to an athlete as someone who appreciates athletes and loves sports and is like a die-hard Alabama fan.

But I do think in terms of how it operates on a daily basis and how quickly it has to move, move, you do kind of have to think of it where like if the play happened and you didn't, you know, catch the ball or do your job on that, you kind of just have a few seconds to think about it and move forward and try to improve.

You're going with the Ted Lasso, got to be a goldfish.

You got to forget the play and move to the next one.

I don't know if you should forget it.

I think you should keep it in the, because you have so much to remember as a, as a White House reporter.

And I think that, you know, if something happens or an interview doesn't go the way I wanted or a press briefing, I didn't, you know, follow up on the question the way I wanted to.

Yeah, I lament over it for a little bit and then I move on because there's another moment coming up.

Was there one that stuck in your

craw in a way that surprised you?

There have been some.

I think there was one, you know, there's been some press conferences where, you know, one thing I learned really quickly during Trump, which I actually think was, it was great training as a, you know, as a reporter, is becoming a reporter because you just have to be on all the time and there's not really a ton of room for error.

And so, you know, I was in the briefing where during COVID, when there weren't a ton of reporters, because we were rotating to keep the, you know, presence small, when Trump came in and we were prepared to ask about ventilators or swabs or something.

And Trump comes in with this DHS employee and they're talking about sunlight being a potential cure and a treatment for COVID.

And what you have to do, I think, as a reporter is just be ready, be quick on your feet, be ready to adjust.

Yeah, you could have the best question going in there on ventilators or swabs and really need an answer to it, but you have to move on if the news is changing or there's something, you know, you're kind of constantly registering what's important and what's urgent.

In terms of forward thinking, though, I really try to be forward thinking.

Like I always keep a running list.

I was just updating one yesterday for someone I'm trying to interview of people I want to interview who I have right now no shot of interviewing.

They have not said yes.

They're not even answering my calls.

But I keep a running list.

This is a physical list that you keep or on your phone.

It's on my notes.

Who's number one?

Let's go.

Let's get it done.

Well, I don't know if I don't know.

I don't know if I believe in manifesting if I say it on the podcast.

I'm going to doggedly pursue this like I'm Kaylin Collins in the White House press room until you give me a satisfactory answer.

How large is the list?

Let me put it that way.

It's it's it's constantly evolving because sometimes I do succeed and can knock people off of it.

But you know, like around the election, I had like six people that I really wanted to interview before the election because I thought, you know, there are certain voices and certain moments.

And that's the art of interviewing and the difficulty, which you know very well, which is you've got to, you want them, you don't want to just interview anyone whenever.

You want them in the right moment when people want to hear from them.

And that is kind of my daily battle is booking guests, booking the right guest

and trying to get people to come on and talk and be willing to sit for an interview.

And

I'm always in the best mood when I've booked someone really good.

Or like, you know, when we got Attorney General Bill Barr for an interview, we interviewed him twice.

Boy, was that a nice one?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, but I had a running list of questions for him long before he said yes, because I was just always hoping that he would say yes to me eventually.

Right.

I feel like interviewing Bill Barr, it's like interviewing, I don't know, charcoal.

Like he's just this, like, like, there's no, yeah, well, that's, you would say that.

That is something you would say.

You know, it's, it's so matter of fact.

And you have to protect yourself, I would imagine.

I sometimes get very emotional when I'm doing those, but I notice you're able to

not take the bait of the moment.

You stay on

what you're doing.

Trump can say, that's a dumb question.

Nobody watches you, but you don't seem to take the bait.

Is that something you have worked on?

Or is that something that is part of your personality?

I truly don't think there's anything that the president could say to me that would really surprise me because I am so familiar with kind of his tactics or how he is.

I mean, he did this at our town hall.

This happened before when he kicked me out of an Oval event, or when he wouldn't let me go to any other events at the White House because he didn't like the questions I asked in an Oval office event.

It's often a tactic, I think, and a deflection tactic in terms of not wanting to answer the question.

And so, you know, I also think that as a reporter, you kind of have to go into these moments prepared for anything.

And if you really are and you're not expecting to be treated super nicely and for them to call on you and everyone to wait for you to get your question out and assume that you're operating in good faith, if you go into it kind of ready for that, then nothing can really throw you off.

And I think truly also you'll have to remember, you know, what are you doing there?

You're there to ask a question.

I'm not there to get in a back and forth with the president about

ratings or my credibility or whether he likes me or doesn't like me that day.

You know, the point is, because that's a distraction from asking about the person who, you know, the administration admitted was wrongly deported.

And what are they doing with that?

And so I think that's always kind of just my

goal is to not get thrown off of what I'm going in there to do, which is my job.

And it's so interesting because this, I would say, this White House, and you can compare it having been in, you know, you talked about tactics.

It feels like they're very well practiced in how not to actually answer

what they're being asked.

And it almost feels at times like an exercise in artificial intelligence.

Like this press secretary feels a little bit like a Turing test.

Like you're, you know, it's just so focused on delivering.

So all the questions are, what is the statement that I'm going to receive that's been designed?

And oftentimes those statements.

are filled with falsehoods and misdirects and things like that.

How do you break through this kind of artificial intelligence that you're, I mean, you're sitting there in real time, as you said, you've got all this preparation and she's just delivering a line.

Even the other day when you asked her, I think about,

I think it was what the OMB had said or what the,

was it office of management budget?

Yeah, yeah, about the CBO score.

How much the bills should add to the deficit.

That's right.

And you had brought up, you what it had been scored at.

And she went into a whole thing about they're always wrong.

And they were wrong by a half a trillion dollars.

But she provided no context on the idea that they had said we wouldn't generate 1.5 trillion and we ended up not generating a trillion.

So it was still a huge deficit problem.

Right.

And also, you know, a lot of what was said there wasn't true about how they, their scores are actually

pretty good.

But you have to kind of choose your moments.

And the gold standard for what people use for legislation.

It just is what it is.

And we're working on this tonight for the show, but there's so many moments, and Democrats do this too, where they criticize and villainize the CBO when they don't like what it's saying about what they would like to get passed.

But when it says something that they do like or something bad about their opponents, then they are all about the CBO.

And so the CBO is getting thrown around like a football hero.

And also, there's like four, I think I counted four independent.

analyses outside of the the government that also say it will add to the deficit.

So anyway, that's what, you know, multiple experts who don't have a dog in the fight say about what the bill will do.

But in terms of, I think no press secretary really wants to fully answer your question.

I think that oftentimes they do try to take whatever you ask and use their talking points or say what they would like to put out there.

And that is where it comes back on the reporters, I think, to ask a smarter, direct question that can't really be answered with talking points.

Or anyone listening to it would say, well, that wasn't really an answer to that question.

And also the key is in following up.

I think one thing that has happened in the press corps and also should happen more, I think, regularly for anyone is if a question doesn't get an answer and then they move on, another reporter should ask that question and should follow up and say, well, actually, but that's the key of listening and being there in the moment.

So I'm going to, I don't know if you're familiar with John Delaney, who's a comedian.

Yeah.

Very funny.

So he's doing a show on late night.

And this is going to seem like a weave.

Colin, but it's not.

It's not a weave.

Well, I'm familiar with weave, so I'm good with it.

You're familiar with the weave, so it's going to seem like it.

So on his program, he's doing everybody's live show, and he set up a thing where he's going to fight three teenagers.

John Mulaney.

John Mulaney's an adult man, a large man, probably I'd say he's six foot, six one.

He's not the strongest guy in the world, but he's beefy for a comic.

He's going to fight three

teenagers.

Settle down.

There's no reason to go there.

So he's going to fight three teenage boys.

Now, not one of these boys measures up to Mulaney in terms of sinewy old man strength or anything else along terms of leverage and the way to fight.

And the fight, which happens at the end of the show, is chaos.

It's three kids.

And he's running around and there's three kids and he grabs one and then he grabs another.

And then something happens, Caitlin.

What do you think happens?

The hive learns.

The three teenagers realize, oh.

Power of numbers.

If we work together, if I grab one leg and I grab one leg and we get them on the the ground, you can choke them out.

Why don't the White House press corps learn from these teenage boys, Caitlin?

Teenage boys learned this in 30 seconds of fighting John Mulaney.

Why don't you guys,

if the purpose of this is to break through

the defenses, because that's what they are.

You know,

this is a battle between real information and a political machine that does not want to offer it up.

So there's real strategies here.

Why don't they do that?

One, that was a really good weave, and I thought

an apt weave.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

But I actually think that we do.

And maybe it's not perfect and there should be more of it.

I'll take that point.

But I think, I mean, I'm thinking right now, we had a lot of complaints from White House officials when the group chat broke and we could see all the information in there.

We could read the text.

You know, I talked to retired four stars who said, that's classified information.

Like there's no doubt in my mind.

I'm not, this isn't a political statement.

It's classified.

I can read it.

I know classified information.

And, you know, there was a day at the White House where they were just denying that it was classified.

That was their position.

And I think the question probably got asked, you know, four different times, five different ways inside the briefing room in terms of how they could make that argument that it wasn't classified and what they were basing that on.

And it was kind of reporter after reporter asking the same thing.

And there was a real frustration on the White House's side.

But it wasn't that every reporter wanted to ask the same question.

It was just that it wasn't getting a sufficient answer.

And so people kept asking.

And I think that is a there is a power and a strength in that in terms of

following up on something and seeing what they say.

Or the White House has been saying this is not going to add to the deficit, following up on that because so many different things say that it will add to the deficit.

And so I do think there's strength in that.

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Is there any kind of, to go back to maybe the sports metaphors, is there a pre-game meeting for the White House correspondents where you guys can sit?

You know, look, there's no question they have a meeting.

You know, we know enough about how the White House works that they sit in a meeting and they

try and conjure up, these are the questions that are going to come and this is the way that you have to answer it.

Could there be

an analogous meeting that takes place for all the White House correspondents, almost like where they are, they're a team as well, Team Information or Team Truth or whatever you want to call yourselves, by the way, would make fabulous t-shirts.

And I don't want to get into the merch right now, but I think there's a real merch opportunity here.

For the White House Correspondents Association?

It's certainly better than that fucking dinner.

I'll tell you that much.

Well, maybe if we wore t-shirts at the dinner, people would like it more.

All right.

I think they might.

But do you get my point?

I get your point.

But then I also, I think the other side of that is, you know,

reporters aren't all working for the administration, that's all the comms and press staff all working together under one boss.

We all work at different organizations.

We have different viewerships, different audio.

Reportedly the same goal, though.

For the same goal, but different questions on, you know, the problem is, or the, not problem, but I think the challenge is there's also different things to ask about.

There are so many topics going into a press briefing, where I have probably about one a week, or going into an Oval Office meeting with the president where typically it turns into press conferences, that I think, you know, different reporters have different things that they want to ask about.

And I think that's fine.

We're not a monolith and different people want to ask different things.

We don't all have to ask about the same thing.

I just think, you know, oftentimes there is one pervasive story of the day, or I think of when President Trump was meeting with President Bukele in the Oval Office, right after the Supreme Court said that they needed to facilitate the return of the guy who was wrongly deported there.

You know, I was kind of surprised that it actually had not been brought up in the first, you know, several questions until it got to me.

You know, oftentimes, Trump does not call on me first when we go in there.

But he does still call on you.

I will say this:

he can be very antagonistic with you, but it's also pretty clear that he likes sparring with someone of quality and that he does, I almost think he needs it.

He needs to be challenged by someone that he thinks has some gravitas or authority.

Otherwise, I don't, I don't think it challenges him.

The game's not fun for him unless he feels like he's going to get pushed somehow.

Yeah.

And I've heard from sources and White House officials around him and just people who are his friends and his allies who say he does he does like that.

And he actually doesn't, you know, speak fondly of people who ask him really easy questions or silly questions.

I think oftentimes in the moment he'll say, I love that question or that was a great question.

But I think also he respects tough questions and often takes them.

And he won't come to me first, typically.

This has kind of been a pattern that has developed this term.

But he will eventually come to me, maybe two or three questions in

and typically wants to hear.

I mean, there was a moment where in the Oval Office, he said, okay, everyone, like, let's see what she's going to ask today.

And of course, my question was perfectly normal and on topic.

I remember that.

And he said, what did he say?

Why Why do you have to ask such a nasty question or something along those lines?

Yeah, he asked why I couldn't just say thank you.

Why couldn't he just say thank you?

Questioning about, you know, the guy that they said was wrongly deported to El Salvador.

And so, yeah, you know, but I think the most important part is going in there and making sure that the questions that need to be asked get asked.

And we can't always choose the answers.

So what's a successful interaction like in your mind when you're in there and you're going to, and I think part of it is people don't, the speed of all this and the fact that it's a constant churn plays to the advantage of the White House.

Because I think, as you said, they're working together and they're facing off a bunch of independent contractors that are somewhat scattered in terms of what they want.

So, what's in your mind a successful interaction?

Is it just to get the question, or is it in your mind to get something that reveals a truth, or is it to set

like a tent post

of their response that you can deconstruct later on?

In other words, get them to take a position, understanding that in that moment, you won't be able to litigate that position as well as you might in the future.

So that sets something up that allows you later on to really dissect it in a way that gets to what the actuality is.

I think all three, honestly, because one, yeah, you do want to get them on the record and just what their answer is.

And maybe maybe you're not going to litigate it with, oh, well, actually, you know, that's not what that says, or here's facts that don't back up what you're saying.

You may not always have that moment, especially in an Oval Office spray.

It's very crowded.

Wait, they call it a spray?

That's what we call it.

Oh, yeah.

Really?

I know we have this like terminology that makes no sense, like the pool, the spray.

You know, sometimes it's more of a fire hose than a spray.

Yeah, I don't think I want to talk about this anymore.

It's making me very uncomfortable.

And

we go in, but I do think you want to get them on the record one.

You know, if the Supreme Court has ruled something or a judge has struck down something they've done or Elon Musk has come out against his bill, you want to get them on the record on that first.

Like his black eye was, you got him on the record saying, yeah, it was my kid.

My kid punched me in the face because I asked him to.

And I wasn't in the room that day, but when I was watching it, you know, we weren't in the pool that day.

I was watching it.

And the reporter who did ask, I was like, thank you.

Because everyone who's watching is saying, wait, does he have a black eye?

What's going on?

And wondering what happened.

And so it was, you know, that reporter didn't go into the room thinking, I'm going to ask Elon Musk about his black eye.

But he noticed it.

Yeah, it's just like, you know, being able to do that in the moment.

But then I also think, one, yes, you want to stake a goalpost down, but two, you do want to get an answer sometimes, but sometimes it's also just important to ask the question because I think a non-answer can be just as revealing as an answer from a president.

And so I think that is, you know, kind of always the goal when you're going in there and just thinking, what do the American people want asked?

What is their question on what's happening today, whether it be Elon Musk or courts or the Supreme Court or whatever's going on?

I think, you know, that is what you are in there to do.

And that's like the ultimate reminder.

When you were in there, that

press spray that you were discussing, the one with Bukele.

Yeah.

I have to say, that was one of the

White House press get-togethers that might have been the most dispiriting one that I've seen, even more so than, you know, yelling at Zelensky to thank them while sitting in the Oval Office.

I was there for that, too.

Yeah, another, and we'll talk about that as well because you've been there for some real, like, normally these things are very pro forma.

The one thing I'll say about the Trump is things happen.

Shit goes down when you're in there.

The Bukele one,

they were being so glib

and almost playful

about

a gentleman who may or may not have been whatever, didn't go through the right process, who is in what everybody agrees with is one of the most disturbing prisons on the face of the earth.

And they were being so

coy

and glib.

And I found that incredibly disturbing.

And I wonder if while you're sitting in there, you felt that.

Well, what was remarkable was typically the president is the only one who takes questions in a moment like that.

He and his, whoever the other world leader is, will be the ones who you direct your questions to.

Every other now and then, he'll ask other officials to speak, but he doesn't often turn to people and ask them to answer the question.

And I was the first person to ask about what the Supreme Court ruling was.

And the president turned to Pambondi.

And then he kind of had everyone go turn by turn.

And just to, you can't always tell on camera, but it is very close quarters inside the Oval Office.

So Stephen Miller is probably, you know, a foot from me.

Did it just get colder in here?

Pam Bondi.

Oh, the hair on the back of my, what was that?

Don't say that name.

I'll go back to talking about the springs.

Pam Bondi is in front of me.

And, you know, they all kind of took turns answering the question to me.

But they all kept deferring to President Bukele and saying, well, it's only up to him.

It's only up to him.

But he is sitting there saying nothing, which, you know, I'm kind of like assessing the scene.

You want to hear what the president's going to say about this because obviously it could end up in a court filing.

And then finally, I asked President Trump, can President Bukele answer that question?

You all keep deferring to him.

And so, and they also were misinterpreting or

it wasn't totally clear if they had explained to the president about what the Supreme Court ruling was in terms of Trump kept saying that they won and that it was a 9-0 decision in their favor.

But if you actually read it, you know, it was much more of a gray area, more nuanced than that.

Do you think that is the idea they hadn't explained that to him or the strategy is we're just going to say we won?

His strategy is generally when he loses, he just finds a way to say that that was the victory.

Or maybe both.

A little bit of both.

You know, sometimes his attorneys will go to him and say, you know, this is the view of this or this is how we're going to sell it.

So it wasn't totally clear to me in that moment as that was all kind of coming out and they were saying that they had won.

But it was a remarkable moment to be in there.

And then also to see President Bukele's response, which was he was saying, well, I can't smuggle a terrorist into the United States.

Obviously, that's not what I was asking.

But that's how he answered it.

But that's why I meant it felt like they were putting on a play.

And the self-satisfaction that they had about this little play

was what I found so dispiriting.

And I don't know if that's like when you're in that room.

So let's say it ends, right?

Do you then have an interaction with Pam Bondi off camera or Stephen Miller off camera or any of them where they go,

yeah, got you on, you know,

what are you going to do?

I guess, I guess it's up to Bukele and they all giggle because they know we're paying the guy $6 million or whatever it is that we're paying him.

Do they acknowledge to you the play they're putting on or their self-satisfaction?

Yes and no, because one, you're ushered out, the meeting is continuing.

You go in just for what's technically the top of it, but obviously you stay in there much longer typically with Trump because he does take so many questions from reporters, which I think is a good thing.

But then you leave, basically, and then you go through the press offices, you're escorted out back to the press briefing area.

And so, but I heard from a lot of officials that day, some who were watching and some who were in the room, who were commenting on one, just how it all went down and how

they answered those questions.

What was their perception generally of what what they saw?

It's a PR strategy, obviously, with them.

Publicly, they say this because they're also arguing in court filings that they didn't have to return him,

despite what judges here were saying and wanting to do a review process of the communications that had happened.

And so, you do have some people who will acknowledge that it's not a black and white case, that they are obviously arguing it in the courts for a reason,

but then also that they believe that they will ultimately win this and that they didn't have to facilitate his return, which obviously they still have not done.

Do you feel like you get better answers from people when it's not for attribution and not for the cameras?

That's sort of getting back to my last point, that the play that they're putting on is the play, and then you have to facilitate the real answer.

So you feel like the answers you get off camera are better than on?

I think it depends on who you're speaking with.

At the White House, White House officials, yes.

I mean, this is a tale as old as time.

They're more candid when they speak anonymously about something.

But, you know, when we do the show at night, we're interviewing people on camera about this, and you're kind of operating with the information you know in your head about what people are saying on background or off the record.

And you kind of use that to your ability to be able to ask better questions because you know what's really going on behind the scenes.

Are you, is it a, is it a breach of ethics to be able to say afterwards, I spoke with the people in the White House afterwards.

They did not want to be for attribution.

Does that limit your access to then say, and they said, yeah, that was all a play they were putting on.

They knew it was bullshit.

It's self-satisfied.

Here's the thing.

We're just going to play this out in the courts as long as we can.

We are not going to be giving people back.

You know,

I guess what I'm getting at is the truth, the real information.

I've always felt like.

in the green rooms of news organizations, you get more truthful information than on camera because on camera, people feel the consequences of what they say.

Yeah, but I think people should say on camera what they actually think.

So Completely.

Completely.

But we think about this when we have guests on the show because we like the people who, you know, maybe our audience disagrees with them or maybe they don't like what they're saying, but we like, I like people who come on and will tell you genuinely what they think.

And they're not saying one thing.

But that courage is in short supply, Caitlin.

That the courage of people to do that is in very short supply.

But I think when you put people on the spot in the moment in an interview and you're like, do you really think that or is that, you know, really the case here?

I think that moment can be in and of itself revealing.

Cause I don't think that you should say, you know, report one thing and have one thing, but actually know other stuff.

I think you should report what you know and say that publicly.

And, you know, that is why I try to be very direct in my questioning or, you know, in our interviews at night.

We don't have a lot of fluff because, you know, no one really gets away with an easy interview.

But that's what I like about it.

And that's what I think is

what makes it successful and gives you that credibility.

You don't see it a lot.

And even, look, there's all that controversy on

your network about original original sin and Tapper's book.

And they talk to people.

And then, you know, there's a lot of stuff on, well, people in private would say, yeah, Biden's not up for the job or he's not.

But that wasn't really getting reported at the time,

all those whispers and hums.

But very clearly, people were disseminating it.

It's, I guess they call it an open secret, but it felt like very much an open secret.

You know, I talked to one White House official, a pretty senior

who worked for Biden about this and, you know, how they thought everything was playing out.

And this person I thought actually made a good point, which was that a lot of the stuff with President Biden happened in public and on camera.

Like the moments that some of his staff was most concerned about were, you know, things he said on TV or how he was walking or shuffling his gait.

And then they felt actually when they met with him one-on-one, they felt better about how he was doing and that whether or not he was up to the job and running.

And so actually, you know, this person was saying that a lot of the things that were happening with President Biden were kind of out in the open and in front of people's eyes.

And you could see, you know, how he was doing and what was happening.

I thought that was

illuminating in terms of just what this looks like.

But I wonder if that's rationalization on their part, because all of their strategizing was to prevent people from seeing.

even those private moments.

You know, there was something, I think we did it on the show early on, where

Kamala Harris was giving a very, you know,

impassioned defense of Biden, which, you know, as your vice president and somebody, he's the most sharp out of anybody.

He runs those meetings.

He does all this.

And our response was like, has anybody filmed that?

Because that'd be a great thing to put out there to dispel it.

Because it was the kind of thing that transparency and sunlight would dispel.

If what they're saying is, oh, no, no, no, no, no, you have completely the wrong idea.

This is a much different thing in private.

Well, that's easy.

That's a much easier thing to dispel than,

no, we're lying to you about this and covering it up.

And, you know, they didn't do

that.

And in the same way, I'll say this with the Republicans and Trump.

How many times have you heard reporting?

In private, they say they're tired of his bullying.

They think he lies.

They think this plain thing is corrupt, but nobody will speak it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and and that's always incredibly illuminating, I think, too.

And the one thing I think with any president, Republican, Democrat, whatever,

there shouldn't be a bubble around them.

Like, I understand that political staff is designed to insulate them or to minimize their mistakes or spin their agenda.

But I think no president should have a bubble around them and that they should freely have access to reporters to ask questions and question them.

Do they want that?

What does a president want an honest evaluation from people such as yourself or others about where you think

they could do better in terms of truthfulness?

Because it feels like that's not their goal in any way.

Well, I don't, I think for any politician, that's probably, you know,

not exactly their number one.

Right.

But, you know, with President Biden, I always found that if you asked him a question, he would answer it pretty directly.

Like, I remember when he had first taken office and it was reported that the Biden DOJ was continuing to basically not use warrants to get reporters' phone records.

They were continuing a practice that had happened under Trump.

And obviously, we know Obama did this as well in his administration.

And I asked President Biden about it directly.

Would he put a stop to the DOJ policy if they believed in press freedom and access?

And he said yes.

And I remember a White House staffer, it was on a Friday afternoon, called me.

Biden was like coming out of some like fluff event in the East Room.

It wasn't like an Oval Office spray.

But I had caught him and I asked him and he answered it.

And a White House official told me they were already driving home for the evening and had to like pull over on the side of the road and field questions from the Justice Department because they had to change the policy and write a new policy because of what he, how he answered the question.

And so, anyway, my point is, I think that you should be able to access the president.

And,

you know, yeah, I know.

It was like,

it made me very popular.

What it makes you wonder, and maybe this gets to a larger position.

Look, you've been down there now.

You're still very young, but you've been down there for a decade, yes?

You've really been

covering this for a long time i've been at cnn for eight years and what i wonder is it's very hard for me having observed it for these many years and knowing what little i know about it having interacted with people who really do work down there and trying to do some things to get some things done down there

is that if it were on the up and up wouldn't it be easier to cover it if if the atmosphere down there wasn't i'm going to do my best to obfuscate what's really going on, the real information.

If these policies were so beneficial or clear or not corrupt, or the corruption didn't exist in meme coins and dinners and planes and all the other shit that's going on right now,

it wouldn't be this hard.

And I'm not saying that,

you know,

it wasn't that way prior, but if you watch, and I'm sure you have,

press interaction between politicians in the 40s and 50s and 60s, it's remarkable for its candor and its clarity.

Like the layers of consultants and strategy and polling and all that have created a game of clue where if you felt like if what they were doing really was on the up and up, they wouldn't need this much

obfuscation.

I also think part of that is how politics has changed from being, you know, hyper-local to being such a nationalized thing in terms of everything they do is aired on television, broadcast on social media, tweeted about, you know, every little thing.

And so I do think that in part changes the behavior.

I mean, I think this is something that has happened for decades.

I mean, if you've studied the presidencies and you're a student of history from Nixon on down, just looking in modern history at how presidents have used the office and how important journalism has been, you know, this bill that just passed the House, that is now in the hands of the Senate, Senate, we were covering this last night on the show, which is several people who voted for it are now, Republicans are coming out and saying, well, if I had known this was in there, I wouldn't have voted yes.

Right.

And yes, it is a long bill.

It's 1,100 pages, but, but, you know, these are your job as a lawmaker is to read this stuff and then to vote yes or vote no.

You know, you kind of are weighing the pros and cons of the bill, you're not going to like it all.

But when you say, well, I didn't read this, and if I had seen that was in there, I wouldn't have voted for it, that's really stunning to me.

right for those of you listening at home uh marjorie taylor green i believe is that let's let's use her as the avatar for this uh her constituency complained that there's uh there's a provision in there that uh makes it impossible for states to pass any legislation that regulates ai for 10 years

and she was she was let known of that online and immediately went oh my god if i had known that

i never would have voted for this yeah and then and elon musk comes out against it and then two other Republicans were saying, well,

you know, every time we say we're going to reduce spending and reduce the deficit, we never do.

But that person voted yes on the bill.

That adds to the deficit based on these estimates.

And so, you know, I think that's why people feel so disillusioned with politics.

Like when you just talk to regular people out in the country, I have just a lot of conversations with people just by the nature of my job, either at campaign events or even just like on flights and going around.

And I think people, you know, and I'm from the South and I come from a town and an area where a lot of people did vote for Donald Trump, not once, but twice.

And it's not a problem.

Three times, probably.

But we, yeah, we talk to people who

say, you know,

don't understand Trump voters or the fervent people who show up at his rallies.

And those are different, you know, they have, they want to wait in line and hours and whatnot.

But there's also people who voted for him also because they were disillusioned with the choices.

They didn't like either candidate and they didn't feel that either person was really going to do what they wanted.

And, you know, I think that is often what you hear from people

who don't like what's happening in Washington, which is why

congressional approval rating is so low and that are just completely disillusioned with what's happening, in part of because of the things you're saying right there in terms of the personal enrichment that we're seeing or congressional stock trading that is happening on both sides of the aisle

that drives people nuts.

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look anytime you have a chaos agent come in and say i'm bringing change but the change he's bringing has very little bearing to the things that they had been critical of and i think that's where the thing that affects me

is it's become such a game and such theater and so blatantly so.

And it's not even like, it's like off, off Broadway local, you know, we're going to put on the music man.

And he really is the music man.

Like, I'm going to come in here and I'm going to get everybody instruments.

And, you know, it's the Simpsons episode of the monorail.

But they seem impervious

to anything,

to anything that would get in between the bond between them.

And like, like this bill, again, like they all, I have a problem with this, I have a problem with this.

They're all going to fucking vote for it.

You know, they all talk about Donald Trump's got a real, you know, tightrope to walk.

No, he doesn't.

Rand Paul Paul won't vote for it.

Maybe they'll get one other guy, or maybe they'll play it out like, oh, they'll look around the Senate and go, Who might suffer the consequences of voting yes on the budget bill?

Okay, let them vote no, and we'll just

organize it as a tie.

J.D.

Vance can come in and break the tie.

They did the same thing in the House.

Yeah.

Oh, he's never going to get a pass.

It just feels like the whole thing is a game in service

of

an individual.

I think the Senate confirmations also basically were,

they told you what's going to happen.

I do think you make a good point there.

I think that it's very hard for Republicans to turn down the president's signature legislation.

We'll see how this plays out.

Maybe it gets delayed.

Or even when you look at Cassidy with RFK Jr., Cassidy's like, as a doctor, I cannot sign off on this.

And then an hour later, he's like, well, I mean, I could sign off on it.

I just meant.

And we talked to people also with Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon.

I was there for his confirmation hearing.

And,

you know, this is one of those situations to what you're pointing to, what people were saying publicly in those hearings and what they were saying privately and the concerns that they had.

You know, there wasn't a lot of tough questioning by the nominees by Republicans.

Democrats obviously grilled them.

They knew that was coming.

They wanted to make sure they could survive that essentially.

And obviously, I think this goes, this is something that happens on both sides when Republicans grill Democratic nominees.

I think anyone who is getting elevated to a job like that, a taxpayer-funded job where you make huge decisions that affect people, should be grilled by both sides of the aisle.

And then, if they pass that and people feel good about it, then you can vote for them.

But that's just not the world we live in, obviously.

And I think, you know, when all of Trump's nominees got confirmed, essentially, it was a sign that

the Republicans are going to rubber stamp essentially whatever he would like to see happen.

And the tariffs have only been further proof of that.

I was talking to Pat Toomey, the former senator of Pennsylvania, big fiscal hawk.

And I said, Do you think that Congress should be doing more on the tariffs that they, I mean, this is technically their job as delegated by the Constitution.

And he said, yes, that he was surprised that Congress hasn't played more of a role in that.

And yeah, so I mean, it's just, you're seeing that play out.

So I agree with you that I don't think that there's going to be some, that they're not going to die on the hill of this

signature domestic policy bill.

Or really any hill.

I don't know that there's a hill.

that they can because I think they believe, you know, it's such an interesting thing because what came first, most of these people, look, JD Vance was not the JD Vance that we see now.

You know, they all were like, this guy's Hitler.

And now they're like, he's the greatest.

I'm going to put him.

Every morning, I cut out a toast in his visage and I toast him and butter him and eat him.

You know, I think that was quite the picture you just painted there.

Thank you so much.

And I think it is what happens.

But,

you know, At first they do it because it's politically expedient, but then I think they become it.

And I wonder how hard it's going to be to unwind it when they no longer have the power of Trump's mass and gravity

holding that together, because I don't know that there's a consistent principle underlying any of it that I can point to.

It seems awfully disjointed.

Yeah, and it is singular to Trump.

I mean, he has a special political pull that

it's hard to see any other politician who has been able to do what he does.

And you see people in his orbit who try to emulate it, and they often do not get away with it in the way that he does.

I mean, people around him will acknowledge this and whatnot.

And I think the other part of it is like intellectual consistency, like the TikTok bill.

It was a bipartisan bill.

All of these Republicans and Democrats passed it.

And then now that they want to continue the extension of basically the grace period for it, there's only really one one Republican that has been coming out on this.

It's Tom Cotton who has said, you know, this is not what we voted for and not what we all passed as a congressional body that was signed into law by the president.

Right.

And it was because one of the owners of TikTok, I guess, became a huge campaign contributor.

Yeah, and was a,

I mean, they had one of the most successful lobbying campaigns, which is saying a lot in Washington.

And so, yeah, I think you see things like that happen.

I think the question is reporters is how do we make sure that that is something we always question people on or that we always bring up.

You know, one thing that we try to do if if we have had someone on who was an election denier or or didn't vote to certify the results if they're coming on the show for the first time it doesn't matter if it's in the news cycle we'll still bring it up and ask them about it because i think that you can't just move on from things and then never you know because enough time has passed you don't ever bring it up again or or talk about it when i think you're at your best and and i think you're at your best a lot It's when I see you litigating the boundaries of our shared reality and doing it with,

I'm not saying ideologically, I mean sort of dispassionately, but that's when I feel like, do you see your job in some regard as that, a kind of a litigator for what the boundaries of our

reality are authentically?

Yeah, I think in the moment of, you know, you can be on a different side politically of an issue or have a different view than Elizabeth Warren does of, you know, Mark Wayne Mullen or Republican Senator that we have on.

They have two wildly different views.

They're allowed to have those views.

They're Democrats, they're Republicans.

People voted for them.

But I think when you start saying things that just aren't true or don't align with

what's real, that's where instead of just saying, well, that's their opinion, there's things that are not opinions.

There are things that can be tested and disputed and are just not true.

And I think that you have to, we always try to bring the interviews back to that in terms of it's not an opinion about the election being stolen.

The election wasn't stolen.

And so you can keep saying that, but we're going to say, well, that's just not true.

I mean, that's not a brave stance, I don't think.

That's just reality.

Right.

But litigating that reality when you say like, yes, but it's unusual because unfortunately,

they swim in that tank of obfuscation that makes doing that very difficult.

And I imagine for you, it's just a constant.

challenge.

And then when you combine that with, I mean, the Elon Trump marriage made it

infinitely more difficult, I think, for people that are trying to do what you're doing, which is you've got the richest man in the world who controls maybe the most powerful media platform in the world, aligning himself

as a force amplifier for the most powerful man in the world, the president.

And those two things together, I think, were

kind of unstoppable.

I think they were wildly anti-American and anti-constitutional, but unstoppable.

And now, obviously, there's whatever pretend fight they're having.

But

you don't think it's real?

No, I think.

You know, this reminds me of there was like an electric vehicle summit when Biden was in office that Elon Musk did not get invited to, I think, because they were not unionized.

I remember he was pissed off.

Yeah, he was pissed off about that.

And you think if he was just invited to that, things could be so different, the political realities.

Maybe not.

Maybe he still would have come over and wanted to vote for Trump and support him.

But I do think of things like that in terms of how the power balance, you you know, like when you're looking at the inauguration and all the CEOs that are there sitting in Trump's background

is fascinating to me.

The Elon Musk thing I think is interesting.

I do agree that he's not criticizing Trump directly.

Trump has not said anything, you know, based on what I've seen lately.

But someone who knows both of them described it to me as kind of mutually assured self-destruction with the two of them.

Right.

And that that is why they'd never truly split or have like some huge falling out that people predicted because Trump is the most powerful man in the world.

Elon Musk is the richest man in the world.

And they both kind of need each other and do like each other, I think, from what I've heard from a lot of people.

And mutually benefit.

Like it's not,

it's an alliance of benefit.

And you can see that.

I mean, we're going to build a golden dome.

And gee, I wonder whose tech company is going to be at the forefront of that.

Do you wonder?

And this is, and, and.

I'm going to have to let you because I know you got a shit ton to do because you got eight jobs and you're going to have to do them all in a day.

But it brings us to that confluence of

I've not seen these titans of industry and media and all these other things align themselves with such

passive fealty.

I mean, I'm looking at it.

I work for Paramount, CBS Paramount,

they're going to pay Donald Trump $20 million, $25 million, $50 million

for nothing for an interview that they edited that Trump says he didn't like.

And they'll pay him that and they'll probably apologize.

Mark Zuckerberg had to give him $25 million.

Elon had to give him $10 million.

Is there a worry that you have

with

where you are that that's also going to be, because nobody wants that smoke.

None of these companies.

Look what he's trying to do to Harvard.

He will

bully and intimidate all the people that he knows he can while showing his real

you know, lack of ability to manipulate Xi of China or Putin of Russia.

So he's just going to, he's going to crush the people that allow him to crush them.

I think when I, I mean, when you look at that and the dynamic of what's playing out, the best thing I can do every day is just report on it and

I think be as clear as possible about what's happening and not try to kind of sugarcoat it or give deference to it.

I think it's just say what's happening and observe the reality and make sure that people understand what is happening every single day.

And, you know, we do try to do that every single night on the show or every day in the press briefings or when we have moments where we're questioning him on that very front in terms of with Harvard.

You know, I asked a Republican, you know, what would you think if a Democrat was doing this to Liberty University?

I don't think it would be the same response that we're seeing play out.

Of course not.

And, you know, the point of that is that everyone says it's a slippery slope and it's this and it's that.

But I just think in terms of calling it out, it's probably the best thing that we can do every single day.

Right.

And continue to do it.

And you're doing it very well with great efficiency.

Has has the conversation amongst reporters changed?

As you guys talk amongst yourselves collegially,

what are their concerns?

What are the concerns that are expressed amongst that constituency?

Do they fear that loss of editorial control?

The Washington Post went from democracy dies in darkness to, you can't run that cartoon.

Get that, what?

What are you guys doing?

And I think as reporters, it's really important when you are in those tough moments and we're the people who are coming face to face and dealing with the White House every single day and covering it from the campus

to have the backing of your organization and to have your editors and everyone back you up in your editorial decisions.

You know, you're being smart, you're being fair to the White House,

you're including their comments, you're reaching out to them and getting the best version of the story that you're reporting.

As long as you're doing all of that and doing your job right, I think you should have the backing of your organization.

And I think for reporters to be able to operate with confidence and going in there and not being afraid to ask tough questions or to report a story that is not going to be popular inside the West Wing, you need to have that because that is crucial to doing your job on a daily basis.

You can't be worried that it's going to face backlash.

If it's true and it's accurate and you know it's right, then you should feel free reporting it and feel free to ask questions that are tough or uncomfortable or not everyone's going to like them because that is our job.

That is what we should be doing every single day.

And I think that is something that

a lot of the press corps has at the top of their mind for anyone who's president.

It's not just for Trump that you should be a good White House reporter.

Anyone who is the poor person in the land.

He tests it more because of the manner in which he governs and

the strategy of it.

But it's absolutely correct.

And I think the takeaway here is that the news shouldn't just be producible.

It should be exhaustive and principled.

And I'm really not sure how you do the things you do and still end up going to nick games.

It just doesn't make sense to me that it must be that you don't sleep, or maybe that's just what young people are now.

They have energy and they do all this shit and still get to go to games.

But I have very much appreciated watching you for all these years and seeing just how good you're getting at it and all those things.

And so

well done.

And uh i hope you'll come back and talk to us again soon in all your free time yeah so much free time uh if you need a third producer let me know but thank you and uh great to talk to you nice talking to you caitlin collins cnn the source watcher for god's sakes you people

thank you

Here's what I love the most about.

So she takes the time, she's talking to us.

And what happens at the very end?

She looks down and goes, oh, shit.

Trump just got off the phone with Putin.

I gotta go.

It's like, you know, and I'm just like, so what's it like in the room?

Are the people mean?

Do they like you?

And she's like, oh, real work.

I was just going to say, I know that she's really busy, but I also know that she's a Bravo fan.

And if she could just find the time, I'd love to see her host a reunion because somebody needs to hold these women to account.

And Andy Cohen is not doing it.

So

what?

Oh, yeah.

She's a big Bravo fan.

And I thought during that, I was like, you know what?

She'd be great at.

How?

How does she have?

I mean, when you have a job as a White House correspondent and then you have your own nightly show, how many housewives can you possibly keep up with?

I want like a day in my life from Caitlin because I'm like, we have the same amount of hours in a day.

And like, how are you doing it all?

So well.

Yeah.

Especially since, I mean, we spoke yesterday, John.

And since then, until now, I have like an endless list of news that's happened.

And then she comes on, you know, she has work bookending this podcast and she's cool as a cucumber.

And synthesizing.

But I think that's the key to how well she does is that she really doesn't take, you know, they are in a crucible.

And part of the Trump team's strategy is to, you know, it's a psyop.

In a lot of ways, I think they're trying to manipulate the emotions and of the people.

And by taking it, you become less capable at doing the thing that you're down there in Washington to do.

And she does not take that bait.

And I think in some respects, what matches her to the moment is she has a relentlessness and a tenacity that matches what they're throwing at her.

It's, it's, you know,

and I, to her credit, she stays with it without, you know, ending up looking like me.

I love what she said about like continuing to ask election deniers that come on her show about they, if they accept the results of the 2020 election, because I think we often hear like like the criticism lodged at the media that they'll move on to the next shiny object.

And it's so important to keep that context when you're talking to people.

And she does, I think she does litigate clearly in a way that doesn't seem designed to self-aggrandize.

And one of the, one of the difficulties of that litigation strategy is if it's designed for aggrandizement, it becomes less effective.

No, she's really been crafting what she does, and you you can tell.

And I think that her dedication to that higher purpose was kind of revealed to me as a former reporter when competition didn't even come to mind when she was talking about why someone wouldn't follow up for another journalist, you know, because that is, they're all trying to get eyes for themselves and for their network.

And it's important to highlight it.

Listen, I shit on the news a lot.

And I think for the most part, for good reason, and all those organizations.

And I do think it's important sometimes to go, but that thing that's there, yeah, do more of that.

Let's get more of that because I think that that can turn the tide for you know, the press has been getting their asses kicked.

But she was uh fantastic, Brittany.

Season two.

What do we got?

Is any what do they want to know on season two?

What's our first listener query?

Can I get a drum roll, please?

Oh, hold on, we're not concerned with the table.

I'm happy to.

Hold on, I thought those were forbidden.

Wait, hold on.

What do we got?

John, how do you stay so informed?

What is your news consumption routine?

Break it down for us.

So that's so nice of them to say because I feel utterly adrift almost all the time in terms of synthesizing material because you have you have the material that you need to kind of absorb and synthesize to do these two jobs, the one hosting the daily show and then this thing.

So I feel very narrowly informed for that, but it's still sort of ephemeral because you do it and then you have to let it go, or you get a good author and you read the book and then you have to let it go.

So I constantly feel underinformed in general.

But if I'm, if they're, what I think they're asking is like, what's what news sources do you?

I happen to like Bloomberg radio.

I leave it on all the time.

I mix it in with a little bit of, you know, NPR, check in on the 24 hours just to see like what I don't like.

But

I like a clarity of information.

And they provide that in a way that strikes me as

illuminating without, you know, the toxicity that you see and that it's, it doesn't feel designed to outrage

or

misdirect you.

So I'd go with that, but Jesus,

I wish I had a better answer, but I always feel woefully underinformed.

It's so crazy to hear you say that.

Yeah, the more you know, the more you know you don't know.

So, that's right.

Because

you want to know it all.

I think I get mad at how much is out there that I don't know.

Like, it bothers me.

Anyway, pretty impressive how much you do know.

What else they got?

What else they got?

Um, how is history going to look back on Elon's hundred-plus days in government?

Oh,

uh,

you know,

I think everybody thinks it's like, I think people are talking about it like it's over.

It's not over.

It's that was the first, that was an official, explicit confluence of the richest man in the world and the most powerful man in the world, like sitting next to each other, seeing how they're going to divvy up the spoils and how it's going to go down.

But it is still unofficially, implicitly,

they are still together collaborating on despoiling whatever it is.

And he will still use his media might and influence to shape things.

And Trump will still shower him with the spoils that go to

those that are in favor of the king.

And this story, we're not even there yet.

Here's how history will look back.

Oh, yeah, I remember the beginning of the story.

I don't know what this story is going to be, but this is just the beginning.

Just the beginning.

It's hard to imagine him sort of like ceding the power that he's had and just going back to being like a ceo that like tweets about video games there's there's no way now they may make theater of it but the idea that like he's now going to spend his life perfecting the why model like that he's he's already tasted uh

being a creator and destroyer of worlds once they once you feel the ring you don't give it back

he's now now he believes himself to be searching for the infinity stones and that and that pursuit won't end for none of any of these fucking guys.

Yeah, I think that was my thought was I hope we don't look back and we're like, oh, quaint, because it only gets worse.

Well, that was like what, so we had on Carol

Kedwaller, who, you know, broke the Cambridge Analytica story in terms of how they were using people's Facebook data to target them for all these things.

And I, you know, and I said to her now, this was, I think, 2018, I said, now, how do you look back on that?

She's like, the good old days.

She looks back on it like, oh, yeah, that was when they first discovered the code that they were going to use to control the world.

When it was only mildly terrifying.

There you go.

All right.

How do they get in touch with us, Brittany?

Twitter, we are weekly show pod, Instagram, threads, TikTok, blue sky.

We are weekly show podcast.

And you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart.

Yeah, man.

And we are.

Back, baby.

I did it.

I jumped out.

I did the thing.

I shouldn't have done that.

I've been really trying not to do that.

But

fantastic.

And as always, it's so good to see you all.

Fantastic job.

As always,

we couldn't do it without our fabulous staff and crew: lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mamedovic, video editor and engineer Rob Vitola, audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, researcher and associate producer Jillian Speer, and our executive producers Chris McShane, Katie Gray.

That's it.

See you next week.

The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a comedy central podcast.

It's produced by Paramount Audio and Busboy Productions.

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