Vice President JD Vance has mocked CNN star Kaitlan Collins and recently arrested journalist Don Lemon in an interview with Megyn Kelly.
At one point, Vance spoke about the Trump administration’s ongoing case against former CNN anchor Don Lemon, whom it accuses of violating civil rights for his coverage of a controversial protest that took place inside a Twin Cities church last month.
Vance called Lemon the “dumbest man in television, formerly” and claimed the DOJ had a “rock solid case” against Lemon, who was among those arrested after demonstrators rushed into a church service in protest of a church leader who also works as a local ICE official.
“You were sticking a microphone in the face of a minister during the church service while the people you were with were preventing people from leaving,” Vance claimed. “That’s a violation of the law. That’s not about the First Amendment. If you care about criticizing our immigration policies, then stand outside the church and protest. You don’t get to violate other people’s rights.”
Lemon has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and has said he was in Cities Church in St. Paul in his role as an independent journalist.
“I have spent my entire career covering the news,” Lemon said after a court hearing last month in the case. “I will not stop now.”
Lemon alleges the Trump administration sent an excessive number of federal agents to arrest him in Los Angeles.
He told late-night host Jimmy Kimmel that agents surprised him in his hotel and tried to handcuff him before they had fully identified themselves or presented a warrant.
“They want to embarrass you,” Lemon said. “They want to intimidate you. They want to instill fear. And so that’s why they did it that way.”
During his interview with Kelly, Vance mocked another high-profile journalist, CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, over a recent incident where President Trump attacked the reporter and claimed she never smiled as she pressed the president over the Epstein files.
Vance chuckled as Kelly said she saw discussion online that the president’s remark on Tuesday was sexist.
“It’s actually like so perceptive, even if you’re asking a tough question, even if you take your job very seriously, like why does it always have to be so antagonistic?” Vance wondered, adding, “Have some fun.”
Kelly added that the disgraced former Fox News executive Roger Ailes, who was accused of sexually harassing more than two dozen women, had once told her, “Every once in a while you have to smile.”
After the White House flare-up, one of numerous incidents of President Trump making crude remarks to female reporters, CNN issued a statement defending Collins as “an exceptional journalist” who works with “real depth and tenacity.”
Collins’s CNN colleague, Jake Tapper, took to social media to slam Vance’s response.
“She was asking the president about how his Justice Department is upsetting survivors of a horrific child rape trafficking ring by failing to redact identifying information about them,” he wrote on X.
