Did CNN's "Caityn Collins" leave the White House press room after Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt embarrassed her by saying she had not "reported a fact since you left the Daily Caller nine years ago"? No, that's not true: The claim originated on a satirical Facebook page run by a liberal man with a long history of tricking conservatives into sharing made-up content. The image on the post had an explicit disclaimer saying that "nothing on this page is real." The CNN anchor is named Kaitlan Collins, not "Caitlyn Collins."
The claim originated in a post (archived here) published by the America's Last Line Of Defense Facebook page on April 12, 2026. The post read:
Karoline Leavitt has been on a roll lately. This morning, she embarrassed CNN's Caitlyn Collins so badly that the reporter got up and left the room.
Right before the briefing, Leavitt holds a short meeting to discuss what she will and will not cover, to avoid questions that would just take time.
'I don't like that you won't talk about the First Lady's statement," Collins stated angrily.'
'And I don't like that you haven't reported a fact since you left the Daily Caller nine years ago,' Leavitt shot back.
Collins stormed out and refused to cover the briefing, which fell to junior correspondent Joseph Barron.
'Once again, CNN proves it's not qualified to cover the White House."
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Apr 14 09:16:43 2026 UTC)
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of America's Last Line Of Defense Facebook page)
A major clue that the post is satirical can be found in the lower-right corner of the image of Collins and Leavitt, which reads "NOTHING on this page is REAL." It also includes a satire label.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of America's Last Line Of Defense Facebook page)
A Google news search (archived here) for the phrase "you haven't reported a fact since you left the Daily Caller nine years ago" only returned duplicate versions of the ALLOD post and not other media reports of such an incident at the White House.
The homepage of the America's Last Line of Defense Facebook account (archived here) mentions it is the "home of the Dunning-Kruger Times" and clearly states, "The flagship of the ALLOD network of trollery and propaganda for cash. Nothing on this page is real," as this screenshot shows:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of America's Last Line Of Defense Facebook page)
The page also says it is run by "Busta Troll," which is the nickname of Christopher Blair.
Christopher Blair is a self-professed liberal from Maine who for years has run networks of websites set up to troll conservatives with made-up news items in order to get them to share his posts. He often goes by the nickname "Busta Troll." A 2018 BBC profile called Blair "the Godfather of fake news," describing him as "one of the world's most prolific writers of disinformation."
His websites usually have multiple satire disclaimers and the stories very often contain obvious hints they are not real, like category names indicating they are fiction, links to "sources" that instead go to funny or offensive images or an "S for Satire" logo added to the images used as illustration. Another telltale sign is the name "Art Tubolls" (anagram for "Busta Troll") for characters in the stories. Blair also frequently pays homage to two of his friends who passed away by using their names ("Joe Barron" and "Sandy Batt") in stories.
