MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle revealed that President-elect Donald Trump told her to “go f*** myself” after she tried to set up an interview with him before the election to discuss his Madison Square Garden campaign rally.
While noting that Trump profanely brushed off her invitation for a sitdown, Ruhle also used this anecdote as an example of how much more accessible Trump is to the press than President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, who she claimed are nearly impossible to contact due to buffers put up by their staffs.
Ruhle brought up the wild MSG rally in October during her appearance on Lukas Thimm’s live variety stage show So Many Issues, which sparked outrage after a right-wing comic referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” Ruhle stated that she took a risk and chose to reach out to Trump to discuss the consequences.
“I wasn’t calling to chit-chat. I said, ‘Mr. President, this is Stephanie Ruhle; you made a lot of comments last night,’ blah-blah-blah,” she noted. “It was not an on-the-record conversation, so I’m not going to get into what he said.
But I called for one reason. I said, “You just made a lot of public statements.” I’d like to sit down for an interview with you. We have five days left before the election. Therefore, we haven’t received any information, leaving me with nothing to report. I called and expressed my desire for an interview. Obviously, he said no.”
According to Ruhle, the moral of the story was that she could get Trump on the phone in minutes.
The process for the current president and the Democratic presidential nominee at the time was far from straightforward.
“But the point is that I was able to reach him by dialing his phone. Now that may seem ridiculous, and you may think, ‘I can’t believe people know this guy’s phone number,’ but the opposite is true: if I wanted to contact VP Harris or President Biden, there are 50 people between me and them,” she declared.
“I could write a note that maybe could get to somebody to get somebody, then through Pony Express and a pigeon something might end up in a mailbox near them.”
Finally, Ruhle noted that just because she was able to call Trump right away did not guarantee that he would agree to speak with the MSNBC host about the rally, especially given his long-standing animosity toward the liberal cable news network.
“I called DJT and said, ‘Yo, can I get an interview?'” And he told me to go f*** myself, but I was still able to connect with him,” she said, laughing.
