President Donald Trump frequently takes calls from reporters, but after one journalist got in contact with former President Joe Biden, his aides appeared to disconnect the phone number, an excerpt from a new book alleges.
Three journalists, Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, are out with a book Tuesday on how Trump won the 2024 election, based on interviews and “extraordinary access” to all three presidential campaigns in the past race. In a first-hand account in the New York Times (NYT), Pager alleges that he got ahold of Biden’s number who agreed to talk to him when he called, but shortly after he was met with fury from the former president’s team. (RELATED: Reporters Literally Scream, Beg Joe Biden To Answer One Question As A Birthday Gift)
“My brief conversation with Mr. Biden prompted a cascade of concern among his top aides. One screamed at me for calling the former president directly. One screamed at me for calling the former president directly. Others texted furiously, trying to figure out how I had obtained Mr. Biden’s phone number,” Pager wrote, according to the NYT.
Pager says he later called Biden again because he seemed open to talking, but the next two calls went to voicemail. His automated greeting, Pager stated, was just “Joe.”
“Two days later, that greeting was replaced by a message from Verizon Wireless: ‘The number you dialed has been changed, disconnected or is no longer in service,’” Pager wrote.
U.S. President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump talk before the inauguration ceremony in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Saul Loeb – Pool/Getty Images)
Throughout Trump’s first six months in the White House in 2025, reporters across Washington, D.C., have had an easy time reaching the president on the phone. In some cases, the president has even called reporters to get his message out.
After Trump’s administration bombed Iran, the president gave six phone interviews to reporters across the media, including ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, NBC News’ Kristen Welker, Reuters’ Steve Holland, Axios’ Barak Ravid and Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Sean Hannity.
NEW: I just spoke to President Trump in a brief phone call. He said the operation in Iran was a “great success.”
He added it was a “complete and total success.” He then noted he had to go because he’s about to “make a speech” about it.
More as we know it on @NBCNews.
— Kristen Welker (@kwelkernbc) June 22, 2025
Moments after Biden dropped out of the 2024 election, CNN’s Kaitlin Collins was on the phone with Trump getting his thoughts.
“In a phone call with CNN minutes after Biden announced his exit from the 2024 race, former President Trump responded, ‘He is the worst president in the history of our country. He goes down as the single worst president by far in the history of our country,” Collins wrote in a tweet.
In a phone call with CNN minutes after Biden announced his exit from the 2024 race, former President Trump responded, “He is the worst president in the history of our country. He goes down as the single worst president by far in the history of our country.” While it’s unclear who…
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) July 21, 2024
“While it’s unclear who the Democratic nominee will be, Trump said he thinks VP Harris will be easier to defeat than Biden would have been,” she continued regarding her phone call with Trump.
In another instance, after The Atlantic was denied an Oval Office interview, the reporters decided to call Trump and try to interview him that way. He picked up, and later their Oval Office request was approved.
In June, Trump gave Fox News’ John Roberts a call after Gavin Newsom refuted that the pair had spoken on the phone in the last day, like the president said they did. The president provided a phone log of the call that had happened a few days earlier than he claimed.
“President Trump just contacted me from Air Force 1 to say this:
“First call was not picked up. Second call, Gavin picked up, we spoke for 16 minutes. I told him to, essentially, “get his ass in gear,” and stop the Riots, which were out of control. More than anything else, this… https://t.co/fHkI7FEFJJ— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) June 10, 2025
Pager writes that his incident with Biden was a reflection of how the aides insulated the former president during his campaign.
“Mr. Biden’s aides never had him meet with his campaign’s pollsters. Instead, they often presented overly optimistic outlooks of the political landscape, alarming members of the campaign staff, who looked for ways to bypass his longtime advisers Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon to get information to the president,” Pager said. “For the most part, they failed to reach him.”
A spokeswoman for Biden declined to comment to Pager on his story.
Sally Lynne contributed to this story.
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