Dylan Mulvaney shared a thoughtful response after Donald Trump took aim at her during the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday night. During his speech at the event, the president mocked reporter Kaitlan Collins for receiving an award and claimed he got her confused with Mulvaney.
“I want to personally congratulate CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award,” Trump said. “It was all about me. It’s a fake — she shouldn’t get the award, it was a fake. But I didn’t mind. I said, ‘Kaitlan, congratulations.’ But it was fake, there’s no question about it.”
He then criticized her facial expressions, telling her to “just smile.” He compared Collins to Mulvaney, who drew controversy in 2023 for appearing in a Bud Light commercial.
“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,” Trump said. “Dylan Mulvaney cost Bud Light $35 billion in market cap. That was the worst commercial ever made by the way, for those few people who want to hear that. Most people don’t care, but I would. I wouldn’t want to hire Dylan any time soon.”
Collins replied by posting a series of photos on Instagram, ending with Eleanor Roosevelt’s famous line, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” She captioned the post: “The second best part of last night’s White House Correspondents Dinner was receiving an award from my friend and mentor, @wolfblitzer. The first was reminding everyone why the First Amendment — and asking uncomfortable questions that people in power don’t like — matters.”
That didn’t stop Trump from doubling down on Sunday morning. The president shared a photoshopped image of Collins’ face on Mulvaney’s body in the Bud Light ad.
Mulvaney later posted a video on Instagram directly addressing Trump’s rhetoric. She congratulated Collins on her award before responding to his speech.
“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,” Mulvaney said. “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 explained that a few weeks ago she might have been more upset about Trump’s comments. However, she was “ghosted last month by a hookup who I really liked.”
“What I realized from that experience was that I shouldn’t want to be with someone who doesn’t really want to be with me,” she said. “So maybe I shouldn’t want to be professionally supported by an administration that doesn’t personally support me or so many others in this country. Food for thought. In fact, maybe being publicly mocked and criticized by this administration is actually like the greatest compliment of all, because it puts me in the company of some of like the most brilliant, empathetic people in our world today.”
She continued, “But I do still wonder, like, why is it so important to them that I don’t find success? Like, what is it that I have that they don’t? Oh my God, freedom. 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, 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 and every day since. And sharing that with the world, it’s just icing on the cake, but they don’t want me to be able to share that because it would mean young people realizing that if someone like me can be themselves and find success and freedom, then they can find success and freedom for themselves too.”
Mulvaney encouraged people to support trans and non-binary people. “And lastly, to the president,” she concluded, “thank you for reminding me that I am more powerful than I even knew.”
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was originally scheduled for April. The annual event was cancelled midway through after a gunman fired shots inside the Washington Hilton. Trump gave a rambling, hour-long speech that concluded with the president donning a red “Trump 2028” hat, although he claimed to be only joking about running for a third term.
