President Donald Trump pocket dialed a reporter at 1.28am after refusing to take his call – and later joked it was ‘another Signal thing.’
Trump was being courted by two political reporters at The Atlantic around the same time his senior appointees unintentionally added the magazine’s editor-in-chief to a high-stakes Signal chat discussing war plans in Yemen.
Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer were working on a piece about Trump’s first 100 days in office and his ascendance back to the White House.
But access to Trump was proving difficult. He’d been ducking their calls and flatly refusing their attempts to interview him when they managed to get his personal cellphone number.
‘Don’t ask how we got his number,’ they eventually wrote.
They’d managed one lengthy chat with Trump after calling that number before the Jeffrey Goldberg scandal broke on March 24.
Then, they were met with silence again. That is until Scherer’s phone pinged at 1.28am on April 12.
‘Had he been calling to ask if we’d seen what had transpired—the display of obeisance from these gladiators, and from his base?’ the pair wrote in their final piece.
President Donald Trump pocket dialed a reporter at 1.28am after refusing to take his call – and later joked it was ‘another Signal thing’
Michael Scherer received a late-night call from Trump while trying to get him for an interview, but later realized it was done by mistake
‘Or was this merely a late-night pocket dial? His team declined to clarify.’
Ultimately, the duo and Goldberg were invited to the Oval Office on April 24 to meet with Trump for a final interview.
Scherer seized the opportunity to get to the bottom of the mystery, asking: ‘Did you mean to call me at 1:30 in the morning after the UFC fight?’
Trump was bewildered by the question, Scherer wrote, and appeared unaware that he’d even done so.
‘Oh, no, that’s another – that sounds like another Signal thing,’ Trump answered.
The lighthearted reference to the Signal scandal offers an insight into how Trump privately responded to the saga.
He publicly backed his senior administration officials – Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz – but was reportedly privately seething about the embarrassing mishap.
Ultimately, three staffers would go on to lose their jobs as a result of the incident.
Ultimately, the duo and Goldberg were invited to the Oval Office on April 24 to meet with Trump for a final interview
Trump had earlier vowed not to speak with Ashley Parker (pictured) from The Atlantic, but later changed his tune
Trump criticized both journalists on TruthSocial after they first asked to interview him
While Parker and Scherer did manage to land coveted interviews with the President, it almost wasn’t to be, with Trump taking to TruthSocial in March to dismiss the duo.
‘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.’
Trump has sparked mass protests following a series of controversial decisions and executive orders
One protester holds a sign at a demonstration asking ‘Are we great yet?’ Trump’s MAGA pledge was to Make America Great Again
It is unclear what made Trump change his mind, but the pair think getting his personal cellphone number may have played a part.
‘All we can say is that the White House staff have imperfect control over Trump’s personal communication devices,’ they wrote.
In the interview, Trump reportedly told them what the biggest difference is for him this time around.
‘The first time, I had two things to do—run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys,’ he said.
‘And the second time, I run the country and the world.’
