Kaitlan Collins was shocked that the “Tonight Show” audience burst into laughter when, for once, Stephen Colbert said something that wasn’t meant to be funny.
The CNN anchor and former White House correspondent stopped by the CBS late-night show Monday night to talk about the state of the presidential race – then got an unexpected update on what people really think of her cable news network.
Collins and Colbert were happily chatting along – “I feel like I know you because I watch you most nights,” the CBS host said – about what it’s like to cover Donald Trump when the rollicking reckoning came. Collins was letting fly with a bit of gossip from “inside Trump World,” where she said the ebullient Republican mood coming out of the RNC has changed since the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Trump has been thrown on his heels, and he’s not really sure how to go after Vice President Harris,” Collins said. “He knew his attack lines on President Biden. He really has struggled with how to go after someone who’s 20 years younger than him, a different gender, different race. It’s kind of been this moment where he has not been able to coalesce around a single attack line.”
That’s where Colbert said, without irony, “I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is.”
Cue sustained live-audience laughter.
Colbert tried to pull it in: “No, CNN…” he said, but it was too late.
Collins looked genuinely flabbergasted.
“Is that supposed to be a laugh line?” she said.
“It wasn’t supposed to be,” Colbert said, “but I guess it is.”
Was it or wasn’t it? Do your own research at about the four-minute mark in the video, above.
Stephen: It was so loud, a lot of the questions were just in mime. We had to go back and listen to the answers. Did he say that? You couldn’t really tell. You had to slow it down and decipher it. It was quite a moment.
Stephen: What’s your favorite part about anchoring? Booking guests and doing one-on-one interviews, which I never did before as a White House correspondent. You go to the briefings, you have two questions, maybe three. Doing a sitdown interview is a different skill, and you’ve got to really research these people and try to break new ground and get past their talking points. I really enjoy it.
Stephen: Biden stepped down as the nominee.
Kaitlan: A lot of news happened while you were gone.
Stephen: I know. You know Trump and his staff; as I said, you covered there for four years. What is going on behind closed doors? What are you hearing about the mood in the conversation going on that we don’t see yet?
Kaitlan: Inside Trump world?
It’s kind of amazing given the trajectory and how quickly things have changed since the convention. At the convention, normally I get multiple texts during the show about interviews, complaints, they don’t like how we phrase something or a question we asked. That wasn’t really the case during the convention.
They were riding high, wind at their backs. The question was not if they were winning, but by how much. But it’s totally changed lately.
What I wanted to ask, you have your own feelings and your own bets about what you think might happen. Did you think Biden was going to step down?
Kaitlan: As a political reporter, the way to be smart and have a long career is you don’t make bets. You follow the story as it happens. It seemed like the signs were pointing to President Biden stepping down.
Stephen: You weren’t surprised.
Kaitlan: Based on what we were hearing, but you never really know. Biden, I covered him. He’s quite stubborn, and he often feels he’s right and other people try to convince him of something. He will stick it out a little longer than maybe someone else would. I was surprised when he tweeted it out. That is not very Biden-esque. Normally, he would call people to the Oval Office or have a press conference. When he was home sick dealing with COVID, he tweeted it. All of our reporting had been for naught.
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