On Thursday, CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins, citing unnamed sources, said that President Donald Trump was “startled” when he heard his nominee for attorney general William Barr state in Senate testimony that he and and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are friends.

“We are now learning from sources that the president was startled as he watched Bill Barr testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and describing the warm relationship that he has with the special counsel Robert Mueller,” Collins told anchor Wolf Blitzer.

A clip played from the testimony, featuring the nominee speaking highly of Trump’s foil, Mueller. In it, Barr says that the president asked about their relationship. “I told him how well I knew Bob Mueller, and how the Barrs and Muellers were good friends, and would be good friends when this was all over,” said Barr in testimony.

“So Wolf, he says there the president was interested in that relationship, but later he goes on to describe what a relationship they’ve had and how it’s spanned for decades,” said Collins continuing her report. “And we’re told that those details actually caught the president off guard, and that he bristled as he watched Bill Barr speak so favorably of Robert Mueller, even referring to him on a first name basis multiple times.”

“The President did not like that,” said Collins. “He was complaining to aides saying he didn’t know how close they were, and he didn’t know how much their work at the Department of Justice had overlapped previously.”

Collins said that CNN was “being told this by three sources,” but that Trump later calmed down and “rationalized” it by noting that Barr and Mueller are both part of “the Washington establishment.”

Watch above courtesy of CNN.

[Featured image via screengrab]

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