WASHINGTON (TNND) — Meghan McCain, the daughter of former Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wants the White House credentials pulled for CNN anchor and reporter Kaitlin Collins after she questioned press secretary Karoline Leavitt about President Donald Trump’s view on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
“Kaitlan Collins is an absolute imbecile and a pure partisan hack,” McCain wrote on X. “Have some respect for the two women standing in front of you who are exposing lies, deep corruption and keeping the country safe. The White House should pull her credentials.”
Collins questioned Gabbard during a briefing about former President Barack Obama and his allies allegedly working to undermine Trump ahead of the 2016 election.
“What would you say to people who believe that you’re only releasing these documents now to improve your standing with the president after he said that your intelligence assessments were wrong?” Collins asked, referencing conflicting information about Iran’s nuclear program.
In June, President Donald Trump said Gabbard was wrong when she testified in March that Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon.
Earlier in the week, Gabbard released a report suggesting that the Obama administration manufactured the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which concluded that Russia attempted to meddle in the election and preferred Trump as the winner.
Gabbard claimed to have “irrefutable evidence” that Obama pushed an “intelligence community assessment” that they knew was false.
Trump’s White House hasn’t shied away in the past from pulling the credentials of the press pool and asserting more control over which news outlets can cover presidential events.
Leavitt announced on Monday that The Wall Street Journal would be banned from covering Trump’s trip to Scotland due to its reporting on his alleged ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The Wall Street Journal article reported that in 2003, Trump wrote Epstein a sexually suggestive birthday card. In the card, Trump allegedly doodled the outline of a naked woman’s body and signed his name in a private region of the woman’s body.
Trump called the birthday card “FAKE” in a Truth Social post on July 17. The next day, he filed a lawsuit against WSJ seeking $10 billion in damages.