CNN’s Kaitlan Collins recapped her encounter Monday in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, who not only had lashed out at her for asking why a wrongly deported Maryland man hasn’t been returned to the U.S., but told her to praise him instead.
The 33-year-old played several exchanges from earlier in the day, when Trump was meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. Neither Trump nor his counterpart expressed any interest in resolving the issue.
“As you can see there in the Oval Office today, the president seemed to backtrack on what he said about the supreme court and instead leaned on some of his top aides to help make the case,” Collins said on The Source.
When Collins first asked Trump about it, he snapped at her: “How long do we have to answer this question from you?”
“Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country?’ Why can’t you just say that?” added Trump, who has long insulted reporters whose work he believes is insufficiently flattering.
Collins also showed White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller contradicting what the administration has said in court about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who came to the U.S.—illegally—from El Salvador, and later married and had children: that his deportation was an “administrative error.”
“He was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador. He’s an illegal alien from El Salvador!” Miller yelled during a Fox News interview, pledging to continue to not adhere to a judge’s order to “facilitate and effectuate” Garcia’s return.
Miller, during the Oval Office meeting, did more of the same by brow-beating the press.
On CNN, Collins offered some context that Miller omitted in front of Trump and Bukele.
“Here’s what we do know: Abrego Garcia was in the United States illegally after he entered the country sometime around 2011. But in 2019, he was granted legal status by an immigration judge who found that he was facing danger from gang members in his home country. His wife is a U.S. citizen, along with their children,” she said.
“And as for the declaration that courts found Garcia to be a member of MS-13,” Collins continued, “his attorneys have disputed that, a federal judge has said the evidence about that claim wasn’t substantiated, and he has not been charged as a gang member or a terrorist.”
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