President Donald Trump instructed CNN host Kaitlan Collins to 'be quiet' on Wednesday night during an Oval Office press briefing after she inquired whether his $1.8 billion 'Anti-Weaponization Fund' had been terminated or placed on hold. This directive came shortly after Trump characterized Collins as a 'corrupt reporter' who 'never smiles.'
'Never smiles. A young, beautiful woman. Never smiles,' Trump remarked, referring to Collins. 'I never see a smile on her face. I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes.' When Trump attributed uncertainty surrounding the fund to 'people like you' and 'the fake news CNN,' Collins attempted to note that many Republicans had opposed the fund. Trump interrupted her, instructing her to 'be quiet' and asserting that she should 'be ashamed of herself.'
A CNN spokesperson defended Collins, stating, 'Kaitlan Collins is an exceptional journalist, reporting every day from the White House and the field with real depth and tenacity. She skillfully brings that reporting to the anchor chair and CNN platforms every day, which audiences around the world know they can trust.' The White House, when approached for comment, directed inquiries to the president's remarks in the Oval Office.
Linguistic Analysis of 'Be Quiet'
Experts indicate that Trump's command to 'be quiet' extends beyond mere disagreement. Linguist Karen Stollznow explained to HuffPost that 'be quiet' is a directive aimed at controlling another person's behavior. Her research focuses on the intersection of language with culture, identity, and belief. 'What's notable is that it doesn't address the substance of what the woman is saying,' Stollznow said. 'Rather than engaging with her argument, evidence or question, it targets her right to speak at all.'
This constitutes a form of conversational control or silencing that communicates to observers that the speaker perceives themselves as the arbiter of who may participate in the dialogue. Stollznow emphasized that telling someone to 'be quiet' is fundamentally different from simply disagreeing. 'Linguists sometimes distinguish between challenging a proposition and challenging a speaker's legitimacy to participate. The former is part of normal democratic or professional disagreement, while the latter is about regulating access to the conversation. The message becomes not 'you're wrong' but 'you shouldn't be speaking.''
Pattern of Silencing Female Journalists
This incident is not an isolated one. Soraya Chemaly, a journalist and activist focusing on gender in politics and culture, told HuffPost that Trump's comments are not a personal vendetta against Collins but part of a longstanding stance against women in power, particularly journalists. 'We now have a president who does it freely, openly, and has done it for years, right? This is nothing new. We shouldn't be surprised. We shouldn't be treating it as exceptional. This is normal.'
In November, while aboard Air Force One, Trump told Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey, 'Quiet. Quiet, piggy,' when she asked about Jeffrey Epstein's investigative files. In September, he snapped at NBC's Yamiche Alcindor, saying, 'Listen. Be quiet. Listen, you don't listen. You never listen.' Chemaly noted, 'The message is pretty clear. He doesn't hide it.'
This is also the second time this year that Trump has commented on Collins not smiling. In a February Oval Office exchange, he told her, 'I don't think I've ever seen you smile. I've known you for 10 years. I don't think I've ever seen a smile on your face. You know why you're not smiling? Because you know you're not telling the truth.'
Gendered Expectations
Stollznow explained that 'smile more' functions differently from 'be quiet' but belongs to the same broader family of gendered expectations. 'Instead of regulating speech, it regulates appearance and emotional presentation.' In response to Trump's comments to Lucey, the White House stated, 'This has nothing to do with gender — it has everything to do with the fact that the President's and the public's trust in the media is at an all time low.' However, Stollznow argued that telling a female journalist to 'smile more' inevitably draws on gendered expectations historically directed more often at women than men.
Collins notably does not smile in response to such comments. Chemaly described this as a 'double-edged sword' for women. '[Women] cannot express anger and in any way, shape, or form expect to have uptake or to be respected. It will rebound on women in professional settings — if a woman expresses anger … it really confounds people's ideas about gender.' Conversely, 'if a man expresses anger, it confirms their ideas about masculinity. So men actually benefit from expressing anger in public often.'
There is no documented evidence that Trump has ever told a male journalist to smile. CNN's Anderson Cooper highlighted this discrepancy, noting that Collins stood among male journalists who were also not visibly smiling. 'That doesn't happen to men. No one's ever said that to me in an office setting.'
Broader Implications
Chemaly emphasized that these comments are not personal but part of a larger pattern. 'He's simultaneously dismissing and silencing journalists as a category of people that are critical to democracy. He feels a much greater level of … urgency and necessity to tell women to shut up because that fits into the larger worldview and policy agenda. But I do think that it's really essential to understand that even though he is attacking women as individuals, he is in fact, attacking calls for accountability [and] calls for accuracy.'
