"Donald Trump butt-dialled me" — BBC Americast

[0:00] He, like, he butt-dialed me as he was clearly sitting watching the television. [0:05] And I'm shouting into the phone, Mr. President, are you there, Mr. President? Hello, Mr. President? [0:10] And, you know, I don't know where he had the phone, but he obviously couldn't hear me, [0:12] and we could hear Fox News playing away. Good morning, Mr. President. It's Sarah Smith from [0:22] the BBC here. Donald Trump's phone number is, well, I was going to say it's a very well-kept [0:27] secret in Washington. That's not true. Lots of journalists have it and have taken to [0:31] calling him up in the White House. But it's a carefully guarded secret among those who have it, [0:35] of course. But yeah, I've had it for a few days, and we decided this morning to give it a go. So [0:41] actually, I had to phone him four or five times, and it was going to voicemail. And then finally, [0:46] the last time, after about four or five weeks... He has voicemail? Yes. But it's not him. It's just [0:53] like a recorded, you know, it's like the standard recorded message saying, you know, this caller is [0:57] not available. It's not, hi, this is Donald Trump. I can't come to the phone. [0:59] Yeah, please leave a message. No, unfortunately not. So of course, it's not really clear that [1:05] you've got the right number when you just get this standard recorded message. But yeah, [1:10] eventually it started ringing out, about the fourth or fifth ring. There's no formality to it, [1:15] even though this is the President of the United States you're phoning. All you get is a gruff, [1:18] hello. And so you just have to assume that's probably him. So he answered the phone, you told [1:23] him you were from the BBC, but he didn't react to that. No snide remarks about the BBC? [1:28] A bit later on, he did say the BBC needs to be careful. And he repeated that he has an issue [1:38] with a Panorama documentary, which, you know, as many people know, he is suing the BBC over in court [1:44] at the moment. And so he kind of made a glancing reference to that and said, you know, that he [1:49] normally likes the BBC, but he was angry about that and that we need to be careful if we want to maintain [1:53] our global reputation. But it was just probably a warning, you know, about, you know, don't take [1:58] his words out of context, don't put words in his mouth when we're reporting about what he had to [2:02] say on the phone call. But other than that, no, he seemed perfectly happy to chat. [2:05] Right, right. No, no fake news, hang up the phone. So, I mean, you got through the gate, [2:10] you got into a conversation with him. Had you planned out ahead of time? I mean, you must have planned out [2:14] exactly what you were going to do and in what order, in order to try to not, you know, not [2:20] scare him off, but to get it deeper into a conversation? Well, absolutely. But I have to [2:24] say, I know that a lot of people who have managed to get him on the phone, get a chance to ask him [2:30] one question and he'll toss off an answer and then, you know, and then hang up. So if you see it reported [2:36] that somebody had a brief phone call with Donald Trump, that usually means, you know, it lasted seconds, [2:41] that they had one answer. So I spent quite a lot of time trying to work out what the first question [2:47] ought to be so that one that he would like and that he would talk about, but also that might give [2:53] us some kind of news line because it might be just one shot. And I was so worried about it being an [2:59] incredibly brief call that when he seemed happy to stay on the phone for, I mean, close to five minutes, [3:07] I was starting to think, oh, I wonder what else I could possibly ask about because I was so worried [3:12] about it being brief. I hadn't really made a brilliant plan for it going on for a long time. [3:17] So you wanted to hook him. You wanted to find a question that would pull him in. What did you go [3:21] with? I knew that mentioning the king and the royal visit that's coming up in Washington next week would [3:26] be something that he would want to talk about. We know how much he loves the British royal family and how [3:31] excited he must be that the king and the queen are going to be at the White House, that he's going to be [3:35] hosting a state banquet, right? So that's something that would probably, you know, put him in a good [3:39] mode, maybe mean that he would want to talk to us. And also, you know, it's a reason for him to talk to [3:44] the BBC, isn't it, that he's got, you know, the British king coming over to visit him. But how do you [3:51] ask a question that you're going to get a substantial answer to more than just, you know, are you excited [3:57] that the king's coming to the White House? He's just going to say, yeah, he's very excited. He can't wait. [4:01] And that's not exactly big news. So I specifically said, look, I'm sure you're looking forward to [4:09] hosting the king and the queen at the White House next week. At a time when relations with the United [4:14] Kingdom are particularly difficult, do you think that King Charles can help repair that relationship? [4:20] So that was a way of, you know, getting into the slightly more substantial problems that there are [4:24] between in the special relationship that way has been really critical of Keir Starmer recently, [4:30] but leading off with a sort of gentle thing about talking about, you know, the king being at the [4:35] White House. And, you know, it worked reasonably well in that he stayed on the phone. He was prepared [4:40] to start talking to me about it and said that he's really looking forward to the king coming, [4:44] that he's a fantastic man. And in terms of can King Charles help repair the relationship? He said, [4:49] absolutely. The answer is yes. I know him very well. I've known him for years. He's a great man. [4:54] And he thinks absolutely it will be very positive. Right. So he reacted well to the king. Did he [5:01] have any harsh words about the UK from there? Did he acknowledge that the tensions were strained? [5:08] Yeah. So the next thing I said was that you probably know Keir Starmer is in a lot of trouble [5:13] in the United Kingdom. Do you think it's time he stood down as prime minister? Because obviously, [5:20] you know, in the UK, there are a lot of calls for Keir Starmer to resign. And I wondered if Donald [5:25] Trump would pick up on that given that, you know, he has said how unhappy he is about Keir Starmer [5:31] recently. Now, he didn't leap on that and say, yes, yes, yes, it's time for him to go or anything. [5:38] Instead, he returned to some topics that he's pretty familiar with. I think we're well aware that Donald [5:43] Trump is not happy about some of the wind turbines in the North Sea, particularly the ones that are near [5:48] his golf course in Aberdeenshire. So that was when he started on saying that, yeah, that more importantly [5:55] than whether or not he thinks Keir Starmer should stand down, he's got to get rid of those windmills. [6:00] He's got to start drilling in the beautiful North Sea, he said. It's ridiculous that there's all that [6:06] oil under the sea and yet the UK is continuing to buy oil from Norway and that they need to do more [6:13] drilling there. And so I was trying to get in there, I have to say. Now, it sounds like a weird [6:19] thing. You know, I wanted to stop the president talking to me, but we know very well his views [6:24] about wind turbines and oil in the North Sea. So I interrupted him a bit to say, look, you said on [6:30] Truth Social the other day that Keir Starmer had plenty of time to recover. And so I wanted to ask him [6:36] what he meant by that, because it was a slightly weird post where he said that Keir Starmer had [6:42] made a big mistake by appointing Peter Mandelson to be the Washington ambassador, but he still had [6:48] time to recover. And so I asked him, did you mean that he can recover his relationship with you? [6:54] And he said, well, if he opened up the North Sea and if his immigration policies were stronger, [7:01] he could recover. But that if he doesn't do that, if he doesn't start running the UK in the way that [7:06] Donald Trump thinks he should, then I don't think he has a chance. So he wasn't leaping on the [7:12] opportunity to stick the boot in to Keir Starmer. But that's quite a strong line. I don't think he [7:18] has a chance that if we were, you know, news site that was less reputable and responsible than the [7:24] BBC, we would be flashing a headline that just said Donald Trump tells the BBC, I don't think [7:30] Keir Starmer has a chance. And that would make it sound as though, you know, he thinks that the [7:34] prime minister is going to get kicked out of number 10 any minute now. And that would be [7:39] not an entirely fair assessment of what he was saying. He was really criticising Sir Keir's energy [7:47] and immigration policies rather than saying, you know, the man's only got minutes left of his [7:51] premiership. Right. And interesting that he went after energy and immigration and not the Iran war and [7:58] British support for it. Did that come up? Did you press him on that as well? Yeah. So the next thing I did [8:03] was say, look, I know you're very disappointed that he didn't join the war in Iran. What could [8:09] he do to win your trust back? And this is so this is so Trumpy. He said, you've no idea how many people [8:16] from the UK have sent us letters, calls, everything else, including high officials. I don't know who he [8:21] could mean, saying how incredibly bad a decision that was, because we've always been there for [8:27] them. But NATO, you know, we've always been there for them. And people were very surprised they didn't [8:32] make even a minimal effort to help out with the war on Iran. Now, I literally do not know what high [8:37] officials he's saying have written and called the White House to say they're disappointed in Keir Starmer. [8:43] He may mean opposition politicians or possibly retired officials, something like that. He may well have had [8:48] communications from some opposition politicians saying, if we were in office, we would have done [8:53] things differently, Mr. President. But so, yeah, he was, you know, he was keen to lay out just how [9:00] he feels that he was let down by all of his NATO allies. But he always seems to be particularly [9:05] critical of the UK when it comes to that. So I don't I don't know why he's so disappointed in [9:10] Sir Keir Starmer, maybe because they did have such a warm and close friendship previously that seems to have [9:15] been really ruptured by this row over Iran. Right. And so he did he bring up Lord [9:20] Mendelsohn or did you in your question? Because that's kind of interesting. Well, yeah, so I didn't [9:25] specifically reference Lord Mendelsohn. I referenced that social media post that he'd put out a couple [9:30] of days ago saying, you know, that Keir Starmer had plenty of time to recover. I didn't read out the [9:35] bit of it where he had written about Lord Mendelsohn. So in fact, we didn't get into discussing him. I mean, [9:41] that would have been quite interesting probably to get into because Donald Trump met Peter [9:46] Mandelsohn several times when he was the US ambassador. And obviously, it's his relationship [9:51] with Jeffrey Epstein that has caused all of the problems. And, you know, Donald Trump had his own [9:55] relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. But yeah, we didn't we didn't go down that track. I carried on [10:00] just asking him about NATO allies in the war in Iran and why he felt he needed help from the UK and others. [10:06] Did he give anything more interesting about about the Iran war and about some of the rhetoric [10:13] he's used and where the where the state of negotiations are? [10:16] Well, yeah, because this is something I've been intrigued by myself. Sometimes we ask pro-forma [10:21] questions in interviews, don't we, that we know exactly what the answer is going to be, but we just [10:25] need to get it on the record. And sometimes you've got a genuine query, something that you want to find [10:30] out. And I have been wondering why he gets so exercised about the fact that nobody else joined the Iran war, [10:37] given how much time he spends telling us how brilliantly it's gone and what huge victory they've already [10:44] achieved in Iran, boasting about the military success. So I said to him, look, given how proud you are [10:50] of what the armed forces from the US and Israel have achieved in Iran, why did you need allies like [10:56] the UK to get involved? And of course he said, oh, I didn't need them at all, didn't need them at all, [11:01] but still they should have been there. We've wiped out Iran's military. He said they've gone, the Navy's [11:06] gone, the Air Force is gone, their leaders are gone. I didn't need anybody. So I said, so why then did [11:12] you want them involved? And he said, because I wanted to see whether or not they would get involved. [11:16] He said it was more of a test that these countries ought to have helped him. And the US would have been [11:23] there for them. They should have been there for America. And it was a bit of a test and clearly [11:28] a test that he thinks that the UK and others failed. I'm sure everybody remembers that slightly [11:34] shocking truth social post that he put out saying that a whole civilization was going to die tonight [11:41] in Iran just before he agreed to the first ceasefire. And I said to him, look, you know, people were [11:47] shocked when you said that. Was that a threat to use nuclear weapons in Iran? Because people were [11:53] speculating about that at the time. I'm sure you remember, Anthony, you know, what would it take [11:58] to kill an entire civilization if that's the threat that you're making? And I wondered if it was meant [12:04] to be an implied threat that he could use nuclear weapons, but he dodged completely away from that, [12:10] didn't answer that directly. He just said the other side is dying to make a deal. I'm not sure that's [12:15] strictly true at the moment, but that's what he said. The other side is dying to make a deal. So whatever I'm [12:19] saying or whatever I'm doing, it seems to be working very well, i.e. if I make these shocking [12:26] threats on social media, you know, that's all part of the strategy and he believes it seems to be [12:31] working. But that was the point I'd obviously pushed it too far because he finished that off by [12:36] going, thank you very much. And I sort of dived in trying to just get that one last question in, [12:41] as we're always trying to do, aren't we, Anthony? But you know, are there any circumstances in which you [12:46] would consider using nuclear weapons? But he'd gone by then. He had hung up. [12:50] Walking away from this, do you think you got anything new out of him? Do you think you got [12:53] any kind of a new insight from, what, about a five-minute conversation, would you say? [12:57] Yeah. So that's an interesting question, isn't it? I mean, I'd sort of feel obligated to say, [13:02] yes, because, you know, this is the BBC talking directly to President Trump. And of course, we're [13:07] making news. But I don't know. Did we learn a huge amount more? He's, you know, he's boasting about how [13:14] well he's done in Iran. He thinks it's all going fantastically well. He's not happy with the UK [13:19] and NATO. And he's very, very keen on King Charles and excited to have him at the White House. No, [13:24] I don't think any of that is shocking or even that surprising to us. It's good to have it from [13:30] his own lips, though. It's good for him to confirm the things that we believe about him. And you know [13:36] what? It's quite fun to get him on the phone because you will not believe what happened after that, [13:42] Anthony. It's the strangest thing. So I've got him saved in my phone just as DJT, right? His initials. [13:49] So he's hung up and we recorded the call. We're not allowed to play the audio, but we recorded it so [13:55] that we could get an accurate transcript and make sure that we were quoting correctly, right? So I'm [14:00] sitting with a couple of colleagues going through the transcript and the phone rings and it says on [14:06] the screen, DJT. It's like, he's phoning back. What? So I picked it up. Like, what on earth is this? [14:16] And he's not there, but I can hear Fox News playing in the background. And we put on the TV and it is, [14:22] it's live. Yeah. He like, he butt dialed me as he was clearly sitting watching the television. [14:28] And I'm shouting into the phone, Mr. President, are you there, Mr. President? Hello, Mr. President. [14:33] And, you know, I don't know where he had the phone, but he obviously couldn't hear me and we could hear [14:37] Fox News playing away. And eventually I thought, well, he said, you know, he's obviously not going [14:41] to speak to me. What should we do? I mean, there's a chance we were about to overhear some kind of [14:47] amazing Oval Office conversation or something that we thought, well, actually, probably to be on the [14:51] safe side, we better hang up. So yeah, I hung up on the president. That is incredible. I think that [14:59] actually may be better than the conversation itself, but it is fascinating. And you did get some [15:03] news out of it, I think. I mean, the fact that he still thinks that the U.S.-U.K. relationship [15:08] can be repaired, that this visit by the king is going to accomplish exactly what I think [15:14] the Brits may want it to, which is to use the power of the monarchy to kind of smooth over [15:19] strange relations. I think I do find that interesting. And yeah, I mean, just what a rush to be kind of in [15:27] the spot there on the phone and knowing that at any minute he could hang up on you. So you have to [15:32] find a way to keeping it going. It's quite stressful to be listening to what he's saying [15:36] and at the same time computing, OK, is that news? Is that a good line? If I push him further on that, [15:44] are we likely to get something that we can use, you know, as a great headline or is it going to [15:49] irritate him to the point where he'll just hang up? Because this is the problem with these calls, [15:55] Anthony. I'm sure you've thought about this as well. It's all very well. Journalist phoning him up and [15:59] he's prepared to take their call and speak to them directly. Well, that's fantastic in terms of [16:04] access of, you know, speaking to the most powerful man in the world. But he's in control, [16:10] even though we've phoned him. He can hang up any time he likes. So it's not like a pre-prepared [16:14] interview where he's sat in a television studio or speaking to a newspaper and you can keep pushing [16:18] him on questions, on difficult things, you know, ask him why he thinks he's so incredibly optimistic [16:25] about the war in Iran. If you look at the facts on the ground, for instance, [16:27] there's not proper accountability when he can hang up at any point he wants without penalty. [16:33] So I think, you know, we need to be a little bit careful about this whole idea that we can [16:37] just phone up the president anytime we like and get an exclusive interview, even if he's talking [16:41] to several journalists all at the same time, on the same day, because I think he's retaining [16:47] more control than it looks like. And we shouldn't necessarily fall into a pattern where a sort of, [16:52] you know, one or two minute phone call is in lieu of a proper interview or a proper press briefing or [16:58] something where he can be pushed harder on some of these issues. Right. And why can't we use the [17:02] audio? Is that BBC policy or is that something the White House has told everyone before? [17:07] He has told other broadcasters who said specifically, you know, can we broadcast the contents of this [17:14] call? He's said, no, you can quote him, but you can't run it. And that's kind of generally the way [17:19] it's been anyway, because it's not in the last few weeks, he's been taking more calls from journalists. [17:23] But ever since he came into office, he has spoken to some of the big American network anchors and [17:29] things on the phone, hasn't it? We sometimes see them popping up on television saying, I've just got [17:33] off the phone with the president and here's what he told me. They've never run the audio either. [17:38] So that's obviously kind of understood between the broadcasters and the White House. [17:42] All right. Well, this has been fascinating, Sarah. What a treat. And yeah, guard that cell phone [17:48] carefully. You don't want it to get in the wrong hands. [17:51] Yes, I should probably change what the numbers stored under, shouldn't I?