Doug Collins Eats Kaitlan Collins’ Lunch Over Signal Chat SNAFU

Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Doug Collins made it clear that he was not going to play along when CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins tried to make his Wednesday evening interview all about the Signal chat between Trump officials that inadvertently included Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg.

Secretary Collins attempted to steer the conversation back to the VA and to issues impacting veterans, but the CNN anchor quickly made it obvious that she was not going to let go of the Signal story — so the former Georgia Congressman flipped the interview on its head and questioned her instead.

WATCH:

.@SecVetAffairs torches Fake News CNN's @kaitlancollins: "Since you undoubtedly don't want to talk about the VA … I would like to know why CNN is hostile to veterans — especially one in Florida, where you just had a $5 million defamation suit…" pic.twitter.com/fwnkeg10Zn

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 27, 2025

“Do you believe that a mistake was made here, though, to have this conversation, to add a reporter, and to have it on an unsupported, unclassified group setting?” the anchor asked.

“Kaitlan, as I’ve just told you, I just answered the question,” Secretary Collins replied. “I wasn’t part of it and I’m not going to speculate more than what the president has already talked about or those who have been involved have talked about — but I’d love to talk about the veterans.”

The CNN anchor would not let it go, however, and tried again: “And I do have questions about the veterans, but given what we saw with the group chat and how this was used. You are a member of the cabinet, you obviously know these other members, several of them who were in there. Is this typical for the cabinet to have conversations over Signal? Is this something that you use?”

“All right, well, Kaitlan, since you undoubtedly don’t want to talk about the VA, I have a question as VA Secretary,” Secretary Collins said. “I want to ask you, because I’ve been curious about this because my job is to take care of veterans, and I would like to know why CNN is hostile to veterans — especially one in Florida, where you just had a $5 million defamation suit taking offense at a veteran who was trying to help people. In fact, one of your employees actually said, ‘We’re gonna nail him.'”

“I have a question for you, Kaitlan,” Secretary Collins continued. “Is that employee still employed? Are you really concerned about veterans? So if we don’t want to talk about veterans now, you want to talk about everything else, I’d like to hear from CNN as the veterans’ cabinet secretary, why CNN seems to have a problem with veterans.”

The CNN anchor would not answer his question. Instead, she tried to go back to the Signal chat again: “My question was about whether or not you, as a member of the cabinet, use this —”

She went on to claim that she did have questions regarding veterans, but Secretary Collins wasn’t buying it.

“No, Kaitlan, what you want to do is talk about a subject that I’ve already answered,” he shot back. “And if you want to continue this, like this, that’s fine, but there are VA employees that are working very hard. There are veterans who get their care from the VA and they get their benefits from the VA, and it does me no good to speculate on something that I’ve already asked and answered. So I’ve answered your question, why don’t you answer mine?”