Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) appeared on CNN Wednesday morning to discuss the upcoming vote on the GOP Senate tax plan with hosts John Berman and Poppy Harlow, where he was asked about one closed-door discussion in particular between Trump’s chief economic advisor Gary Cohn and moderate Senate Democrats about tax reform. It was during this conversation that the president himself called in — at the time during his recent trip to Asia — and suffice to say he temporarily derailed the discussion.
“About 30 minutes in Gary gets up and takes a call on his cellphone, comes back into the room and says, ‘We have somebody calling in from Asia,’ and it was the president,” Carper told the hosts. “And it was nice, nice of him to do that,” he continued. “15 minutes later, the president is still talking and I said to Gary … ‘Gary, why don’t you do this, why don’t you take your cellphone back and say, Mr. President, you’re brilliant, but we’re losing contact, and I think we’re gonna lose you now, so goodbye.’ And that’s what he did and we hung up, and we went back to having the kind of conversation we needed to.”
And this is the reaction that John Berman and Poppy Harlow had:
“Are you saying Gary Cohn faked a bad connection to get the president off the phone?” Berman asked, incredulously. “Well I wouldn’t … Uh, I don’t wanna throw him under the bus,” Carper said, half concealing a smirk. “But yes.”
We’re not even a full year into this presidency yet, folks.
(Via CNN)