MS NOW host Stephanie Ruhle chronicled her tireless attempts to get President Donald Trump on the phone amid his ongoing war on Iran, revealing on Friday that he unexpectedly picked up while she was Ubering to an airport that morning — and “got into it” with her.
Ruhle detailed the exchange during an appearance on “All In with Chris Hayes.”
“So we’re 20 days into this war and like so many other reporters, I have called the president every single day to no avail,” she said. “And every other day except today, I have called him from my home office with my notes, I’m ready to go, hoping he’s going to speak to me.”
Ruhle noted that Trump once again avoided her call, which didn’t stop her.
“I was in the back of an Uber with my child sitting next to me on the way to an airport,” she told Hayes. “And I thought, ‘I’m gonna leave him one more message. Maybe I can get him on the phone this afternoon.’”
She continued, “And lo and behold, it’s 9:30 in the morning, I’m in the back of a Honda Pilot with a 12-year-old next to me, and the president says, ‘Hello, Stephanie? I shouldn’t even be answering. You know, you’re very mean to me. You’re very hard on me.’ And I’m like, ‘This can’t be happening.’ But alas, for the next 15 minutes, we got into it.”
She shared how Trump immediately “started with this idea” that Iran “was two weeks away” from having a nuclear bomb.
“And according to the president, they had definitive plans to use it,” Ruhle told Hayes. “There’s no evidence that we have heard this from absolutely anyone, but this is his argument, this is why we had to do it.”
Trump announced in June that U.S. strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities, only to claim, while announcing the war in February, that they were being rebuilt.
Ruhle shared that Trump said regime change decisions were “not as important as them not having nuclear power,” once again claiming to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Trump also told Ruhle that the U.S. is sticking around because of Iran’s rebuilding efforts.
“It can take 10 years and we want to make sure they don’t,” said Trump, according to Ruhle.
She also noted, “Remember guys, it was like a week ago he was saying, ‘I’m going to decide who’s in charge there,’ and now he’s saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no, it’s just about obliterating their nuclear power, which we did.’ He talks as though we — he — has already won the war.”
