The president took aim at both Mulvaney and CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday, July 24
Credit: The Hapa Blonde/GC Images; Anna Moneymaker/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Dylan Mulvaney has responded after Donald Trump took aim at both her and CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday, July 24
- The president criticized Collins after she won an award at the dinner, before going on to compare her to Mulvaney
- In an Instagram video, the social media personality congratulated Collins for winning an award before thanking Trump for reminding her that she’s “more powerful than I even knew”
Dylan Mulvaney has spoken out after Donald Trump invoked her name while taking aim at CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last week.
The president brought up both Mulvaney, 29, and Collins during his speech on Friday, July 24, prompting Mulvaney to respond with an Instagram video in which she thanked him for reminding her that she’s “more powerful than I even knew.”
In his speech, Trump addressed Collins, 34, who had just been onstage to accept an award for her coverage of his administration in 2025, congratulating her before saying she shouldn’t have been given the award.
Credit: Eric Lee/Getty
The president, 80, then criticized her facial expressions, telling her to “just smile,” before comparing her to Mulvaney and alluding to Mulvaney’s 2023 collaboration with Bud Light, which prompted a conservative boycott and a decline in the brand’s sales.
Two days later, on Sunday, July 26, the president shared a photoshopped image of Collins’ face on Mulvaney’s body on Truth Social. In the image, the person holds a Bud Light beer and sits at a table with more beers.
In response to Trump’s remarks about both women, Mulvaney posted her Instagram video.
She began by explaining that it had been “an interesting time” after Trump said her name “four times” in Friday’s speech, before congratulating Collins on her award.
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“I’m incredibly honored to be compared to her in any way, and I hope that she keeps doing all the great work,” she said.
She then remarked that, despite keeping a “pretty low profile” since the Bud Light drama, Trump is still talking about it.
“It seems to me that I might be like the one that got away for these men,” she joked. “Like, I am permanently burned into their retinas. I am microchipped into their minds. And when I first heard that the president put me on his diss track, I was like, ‘Well, that’s not good.’ ”
Trump’s comments would have affected her more a few weeks ago, before she was “ghosted by a hookup” she “really liked,” she explained.
“What I realized from that experience was that I shouldn’t want to be with someone who doesn’t really want to be with me,” she quipped. “So maybe I shouldn’t want to be professionally supported by an administration that doesn’t personally support me or so many others in this country.
“In fact, maybe being publicly mocked and criticized by this administration is actually the greatest compliment of all,” she went on. “Because it puts me in the company of some of the most brilliant empathetic people in our world today.”
She finished by urging her followers to keep supporting transgender and nonbinary individuals and thanking Trump for “reminding me that I am more powerful than I even knew.”
Before posting the video, Mulvaney had already shown support for Collins on her Instagram Stories.
On Saturday, July 25, she shared an inspirational quote attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt from Collins’ recap of the event.
She captioned the quote — “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” — with three white heart emojis.
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Collins, meanwhile, shared a photo of herself with fellow CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer on Instagram and wrote that receiving her award from him was the “second-best part” of the dinner.
She added, “The first was reminding everyone why the First Amendment — and asking uncomfortable questions that people in power don’t like — matters.”
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