Trump clashes with CNN reporter while arriving at UN with Melania Trump

Donald Trump confronted CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins as he arrived at the United Nations General Assembly in New York with first lady Melania Trump on Tuesday.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the president told Collins, days after his administration blocked CNN from White House access.

As Collins questioned him about the Iran war, Trump replied: “It’s an honor to be here. I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me. You said you weren’t gonna cover me, you shouldn’t be covering me.”

Before walking away with Melania, Trump said the United States was “making a lot of progress” and that “our country is doing really, really well.”

Another reporter then asked Trump what message he had for Vladimir Putin. The president turned back and answered emphatically: “Settle the war.”

The heated confrontation followed the Trump administration’s decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House over coverage the president dismissed as “fake news.”

The dispute intensified Monday when the three outlets sued, arguing that the ban violated their First Amendment rights. The television pool—ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN and NBC—also said it would boycott White House events in solidarity.

Trump is set to address the General Assembly before beginning a full day of diplomatic engagements, including meetings with UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as talks with Gulf leaders.

Trump is also scheduled to sign an agreement with Denmark and Greenland that would permit an expanded US military presence on the Arctic island. Later in the evening, he is due to hold a closed-door pull-aside meeting with Venezuela’s leader Delcy Rodríguez.

His appearance at the annual summit comes as the wars in Iran and Ukraine contribute to a fuel squeeze in the United States, with retail diesel prices climbing above $6.50 a gallon for the first time on record.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Trump is willing to meet with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian during his time in New York.

“This is a president that will meet with anybody for the most part, because he believes that engaging with people is important if you’re going to solve problems,” Rubio said on NBC’s Today show.

“It doesn’t mean you’re going to end up agreeing with them, but it’s important.”

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell about 1 percent to roughly $99 a barrel as optimism returned to the markets.

According to a White House official, Trump will use his speech to argue that “he is using American power to confront longstanding challenges and reshape the world to America’s benefit.”

“We expect the president will highlight how he has and his administration have confronted complex problems head-on around the world,” Mike Waltz, Trump’s ambassador to the UN, told reporters.

Waltz suggested Trump could also revive his attacks on the body, which he has accused of failing on war and peace, pushing a ‘con job’ on climate change and promoting the ‘invasion’ of migrants into Europe. 

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Trump has already scaled back US funding for the organization, raising questions about its future. 

Trump told last year’s General Assembly that the US had ‘demolished’ Iran’s nuclear capabilities after he ordered strikes on three key sites in June 2025. He also claimed ‘everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize.’

He returns nearly seven months into a war with Iran that has become a major issue for Republicans ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. 

US and Israeli strikes have killed much of Tehran’s top leadership and degraded its military capabilities, while an American blockade of Iranian oil has put further pressure on its economy. 

But Iran has effectively strangled the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil previously flowed, while Tehran-backed Houthi rebels have made the alternative Bab al-Mandab Strait increasingly perilous. 

Drone strikes by Iran-backed militias in Iraq forced Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline earlier this month to shut down, further increasing pressure on the energy market. 

Qatar and other mediators are trying to overcome a ‘deep deficit of trust’ between Washington and Tehran and get the two sides back to talks, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said on Monday.

‘Either we sign a deal now or sign a deal 10 months away,’ al-Ansari told the Concordia Annual Summit. ‘The only difference is the number of dead and destruction that we see.’

The Greenland deal, announced last week, follows Trump’s repeated threats to ‘take over’ the island by military force if necessary. Greenland remains Danish territory under the agreement.

Trump claimed last week that he had got Russia and Ukraine to stop targeting each other’s energy infrastructure, after promising on the 2024 campaign trail to end the war on Day One. 

Zelensky said he would sign up if Russia did. Moscow said it would only comply if Western energy sanctions were lifted first. 

But both sides have kept striking energy infrastructure, including a massive Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow over the weekend involving some 450 aircraft. 

Trump flies back to Washington to greet China’s Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, with the TV pool’s boycott threatening to leave the state visit without network coverage. 

Melania’s office has taken a different line, allowing CNN to cover her announcement at the St. Regis hotel in Manhattan on Tuesday, a source familiar with the matter told the Daily Mail.