MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle has revealed the strongly worded response Donald Trump gave her when he answered her phone call during the election.
Appearing on Lukas Thimm’s live stage show So Many Issues, Ruhle first praised the president-elect for his accessibility compared to his Democrat counterparts.
The progressive host said she had been calling for an interview for days before the race went in Trump’s favor.
Surprised he even picked up, she recalled how she asked the campaigning Republican for a filmed sit-down.
Trump told her no, but it was Ruhle’s description of the delivery of the rebuff that drew laughs and gasps for the crowd.
‘The day after Donald Trump had that crazy rally at Madison Square Garden. I rolled the dice and I called him on the phone and he answered,’ Ruhle recalled to Thimm, speaking around the subject of misinformation.
‘I wasn’t calling to chit-chat,’ Ruhle went on. ‘It was not an on-the-record conversation. I said you just said a whole bunch of public things, I’d like to sit down for an interview with you, we’ve got five days before the election.
‘He told me to go f**K myself,’ Ruhle revealed with a laugh.
Scroll down for video:
‘Obviously, he said no,’ Ruhle – formerly the managing editor for Bloomberg Television and an editor at Bloomberg News – continued, growing more serious.
‘But my point is, I was able to get to him by dialing his phone.’
By comparison, she said she had to deal with ’50 or so’ handlers when trying to contact Biden and Kamala Harris.
‘But the reverse of that, if I were to want to connect with VP Harris or President Biden, there’s 50 people between me and that I could write a note that, maybe, could get to somebody to get somebody,’ Ruhle said in a stunning reversal.
‘Then through Pony Express and a pigeon, something might end up in a mailbox near them,’ she joked.
In contrast, when it came to Trump, she said, she simply dialed his personal number.
‘I called DJT to say, “Yo, can I have an interview,’ Ruhle recalled, laughing off the ordeal.
She went on to describe, in more detail, her own experience with both Biden and Harris after interviewing them during their respective campaigns.
‘In those completely structured environments, you never have a human moment,’ Ruhle said of those sit downs.
‘And this is the thing about Donald Trump, love him or hate him, and when I say he keeps it real, he keeps it real.
‘But he’s lying, [but] people know what they’re getting.’
Harris, by contrast, spoke to her in September with the careful cadence of a career politician – a profile many have become wary of.
‘In the way of traditional media, the White House runs the show.
‘When I interviewed President Biden, they gave me 10 minutes, OK?’ Ruhle said. A politician can knock out one answer in 15 minutes.’
Ruhle framed Trump as more authentic.
Biden’s team, she said, tried to censor certain subjects, like tough questions about whether he’d pardon his son Hunter.
‘A completely reasonable question,’ Ruhle recalled of the May 2023 interview, held in the Oval Office.
‘As soon as I said those words, President Biden’s team waved in front of the camera, started screaming and yelling and stopped the interview.
‘Now that immediately went on, that’s public record, that was in the transcript, that became its own story, and then they punished us.’
In the interview, the president is heard responding, ‘First of all, my son has done nothing wrong. I trust him. I have faith in him. It impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him.’
Complaining about ‘negative’ press coverage seen about him over the past three years, Biden added: ‘Everything is negative.’
‘I’m not being critical of the press, but you turn on the television – the only way you’re going to get a hit is if there’s something negative, you know. You don’t – anyway, that’s number one.’
Biden’s team then moved to end the interview.
Neither development appeared in the final cut, she revealed.
Biden sparked uproar earlier this month by announcing he will pardon his son before he leaves office.