Kaitlan Collins brilliantly fact-checked Donald Trump to his face and his eye-bulging fury made it even better

Regular visitors to these pages will already know we hold CNN’s White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins in the highest esteem.

No other Trump watcher calls him out with such precision or prompts such furious responses from the American president at the time of writing.

And this exchange, about Trump’s outrageous lifting of billions of dollars of sanctions on Russia – and how exactly that was related to Putin’s release of American Stephen Hubbard, captured in 2022 and jailed for allegedly fighting on behalf of Ukraine.

And it is absolutely worth watching in full.

President Trump is directly tying waiving Russian sanctions to the release of the freed American Stephen Hubbard, despite denying he gave anything to Putin. https://t.co/TUxcvodPuF

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) October 21, 2026

Trump: We were in the midst of negotiating and a lot of stupid people said why aren’t you putting Russian sanctions—

Collins: But you said you didn’t give anything for his release

Trump: If I didn’t do that, you wouldn’t have him coming back.

Collins: So you did give something.

Trump: You don’t know anything. You’re fake news CNN.

Collins: You’re saying you lifted the sanctions in exchange for his release?

Trump: You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a low IQ person. You’re a dummy.

Nailed him!