Atlantic’
Reporters Dish on Trump 1AM Butt-Dial: ‘Don’t Ask’
BUTT DIAL
The
reporters managed to get the president on his personal line—and he found an odd
time to call them back.
Corbin
Bolies
Media
Reporter
Updated Apr.
28 2025 5:55PM EDT
Published
Apr. 28 2025 4:00PM EDT
Two Atlantic
journalists finally scored an interview with President Donald Trump only after
calling his personal cell phone number, prompting Trump to give them a “butt
dial” in the middle of the night.
"I
should just say it was two conversations and actually one late night, 1:28 A.M.
butt dial from the president,” reporter Ashley Parker told Morning Joe on
Monday.
For The
Atlantic’s May cover story detailing Trump’s ascendance after political exile,
Parker and fellow reporter Michael Scherer conducted two lengthy interviews in
which Trump gloated that he now runs “the country and the world.”
Trump
initially reneged on a sit-down interview after attacking them on Truth Social.
“Ashley
Parker is not capable of doing a fair and unbiased interview. She is a Radical
Left Lunatic, and has been as terrible as is possible for as long as I have
known her,” Trump wrote March 17. “Likewise, Michael Scherer has never written
a fair story about me, only negative, and virtually always LIES.”
Parker and
Scherer then managed to get Trump on his personal cell phone, prompting a
lengthy discussion about his first two months in office.
The two then
tried to follow up with Trump in April after a series of scandals—including the
revelation that Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was roped into a Signal group
chat with top administration officials—had plunged his presidency into chaos.
Trump
ignored their call until later that night, when he called Scherer back at 1:28
a.m.
“Had he been
calling to ask if we’d seen what had transpired—the display of obeisance from
these gladiators, and from his base?“ Parker and Scherer wrote in the Atlantic
piece. “Or was this merely a late-night pocket dial? His team declined to
clarify.”
Trump later
invited them to the Oval Office for a third interview, where the two met with
the president on April 24 alongside Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
But the two
were tight-lipped on how they got Trump’s number in the first place.
“Don’t ask
how we got his number,” Parker and Scherer wrote. “All we can say is that the
White House staff have imperfect control over Trump’s personal communication
devices.”
Trump made a
habit in the past of using his unsecured personal cellphone to gossip with
friends, even as aides during his first term warned him foreign spies were
eavesdropping on him.
Wanting to
close the loop, Scherer eventually pressed Trump about the butt-dial during the
Oval Office exchange last week. “Did you mean to call me at 1:30 in the morning
after the UFC fight?” he asked.
Trump
replied with confusion, seemingly unaware he had called Scherer back. Scherer
then explained how Trump’s number rang him late that night.
“Oh, no,
that’s another—that sounds like another Signal thing," Trump replied.
Media
Reporter
CorbinBolies
corbin.bolies@thedailybeast.com
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