President Donald Trump spoke with reporters from The Atlantic, but according to Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, Trump had two accidental conversations after 1 a.m. in the morning.
"I should just say it was two conversations and actually one late night, 1:28 a.m. butt dial from the president," Parker told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday. "But two times we spoke with him, and on Hegseth, that, it was interesting. We asked, this is the moment where [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth has rotated out his chief of staff. He's fired three top advisers. There's news reports of his wife, who is not a defense department official, joining him in official meetings. You know, a story that he had installed a makeup room in the Pentagon. And what the president said was, look, I had a talk with him. It was a — I did it in a positive way, but I had a talk with him, and I think he's going to get his act together."
Scherer shared the audio with MSNBC, in which Trump accidentally appeared to call the reporter he'd previously trashed on his Truth Social platform.
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"Who's calling? Trump asks after the sounds of a phone fumbling around.
"Uh, this is Michael Scherer. I'm a reporter for The Atlantic," he says.
"Oh, I know who you are, Michael," Trump replied. "I know who you are. Never write. You never write good about me, Michael. Never ever."
"But he continued to talk to you," Witt noted after playing the clip.
"So, we had spent at that point more than a month reporting among his inner circle and outer circle for this story," said Scherer. "We had asked formally and informally whether he would give us an interview. He'd agreed to an interview. And then earlier that week, he had put out a Truth Social post after someone, we still don't know who, had gotten to him and warned him off talking to us. Which sort of left us no option. It's not my practice to cold call principals. But he had he had — he had publicly said he called me someone who writes lies. And he went after Ashley Parker as well. So, it was really not much to lose at that point."
He said he'd interviewed Trump "a lot," so when Trump told him, "I know who you are, it wasn't just that week,"
"I mean, I think at that point, I've done six other interviews with him. He does know who I am. And it was a little awkward beginning. I wasn't sure it was even him on the phone when he picked up. But we spoke for a little more than 20 minutes there, and it was a really productive, useful interview that became the backbone of the piece. And then later on, you know, we had more phone exchanges that weren't successful. And then last week, he invited us into the Oval Office to sort of round out the story."
See the videos below or at the link here.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
Parker:
- YouTubeyoutu.be
