Apparently, Donald Trump fancies himself a comedian. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of offensive comedian from another time, where there were no repercussions for making inappropriate and anti-trans jokes about people. But that’s what he did during his White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech in July 2026 when he joked about mistaking CNN journalist Kaitlan Collins for Dylan Mulvaney.
Mulvaney is a trans activist and influencer who made headlines in 2023 for her brand partnership with Bud Light. So when Trump “joked” about the two women, the idea was that he views Collins as a trans woman which, seemingly as part of the joke, is meant to be a slight to Collins. Later, Mulvaney released a video in response to the so-called joke.
Donald Trump joked that he mistook Dylan Mulvaney for Kaitlan Collins.
Trump: Kaitlan Collins is a young, attractive woman. She never smiles. Do you ever smile? I thought she had really made it big with a major new sponsorship but then I informed her that it was not her on the Bud Light can. It was Dylan Mulvaney pic.twitter.com/Eqfu4gs7kA
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 25, 2026
During Trump’s speech, he joked about mistaking the women for each other as he recalled the Bud Light controversy. In 2023, after Mulvaney partnered with the brand, conservatives spoke out against the partnership and it created an even larger divide between political sides. But the timing of Trump bringing it up makes little to no sense, according to critics.
Trump joked to the attendees, “I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship, but then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney.”
He went on to explain his thoughts on the Bud light campaign which, again, seems to be out of left field since the event was more than three years after the controversy even happened.
“And Dylan Mulaney cost Bud Light $35 billion dollars in market cap,” Trump added. “That was the worst commercial ever made, by the way, for those few people that want to hear that. Most people don’t care, but I would. I wouldn’t want to hire Dylan anytime soon. Think of it, they hired Dylan Mulaney and their market cap has gone down by $35 billion. Who wrote that commercial?”
Dylan Mulvaney responded to Trump’s speech.
@dylanmulvaney A response 🇺🇸❤️ please support trans and non binary people today and every day
♬ I Am America – Shea Diamond
Afterward, Mulvaney posted a video on TikTok in response to Trump’s remarks about her and the award-winning CNN anchor. In her video, she addresses what Trump said and how she feels about the Trump Administration as a whole.
“My name is Dylan Mulvaney, and the president of the United States said my name in his speech four times on Friday night,” Mulvaney says in her video. “Firstly, I would like to congratulate CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on her award and tell her that I’m incredibly honored to be compared to her in any way, and I hope that she keeps doing all the great work. Now, the president also brought up a video I did over three years ago. And mind you, I’ve been kind of flying under the radar, keeping up a pretty low profile, just, like, doing my little musicals, singing, dancing. And yet I am still his topic of conversation all these years later. And it seems to me that I might be, like, the one that got away for these men. Like, I am permanently burned into their retinas. I am microchipped into their minds.”
She goes on to say that “maybe being publicly mocked and criticized by this administration” is a compliment because it means she is part of a group of intelligent and empathetic people in the world.
“I am free in a way that they will never have the privilege to experience, and they want to use their power to take away my freedom,” she continues. “But what they don’t understand is that my freedom has, like, zero contingency on what they can provide for me, because my freedom is fully dependent on the moment that I acknowledged my real, authentic self in every day since. And sharing that with the world, it’s just icing on the cake.”
Trump also shared an AI image of Kaitlan Collins as Dylan Mulvaney.
Not to stop at one anti-trans joke, Trump later shared a photo on Truth Social to continue the supposed laughs. Although no one is really laughing, so it’s still unclear who this is for. He shared an AI-edited image from Mulvaney’s 2023 campaign with Bud Light with Collins’s head on Mulvaney’s body instead. It seems that he was not ready to just let the joke go, even if it wasn’t one to get a rousing response from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner attendees.
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