President Donald Trump’s personal phone number is “for sale to deep-pocket interests seeking influence, two administration officials” told the Atlantic.
The stunning report reveals Trump’s personal number is a “hot commodity” as officials tell the Atlantic they’ve “heard of CEOs offering money for his number … [and] crypto bros offering cryptocurrency for it.”
According to the Atlantic, “No one foresaw this at the start of Trump’s second term, when the number was closely held by the president’s friends and a handful of journalists who used it sparingly.” Now, Trump receives so many calls “on his private iPhone that his advisers have stopped trying to keep track. Sometimes in meetings, he will leave his phone face up, allowing staff to gawk at the flashing notifications of incoming or missed calls that pile up on his screen.”
“It is literally call after reporter call,” one official told the Atlantic. “It is just boom, boom, boom.”
Per the report, Trump’s phone particularly lights up — “like flashing a Bat-Signal” — “after a journalist successfully catches the president and then publishes a mini-scoop on what he says.” Those scoops signal to reporters “Trump may be idle and chatty,” though the conversations tend to be “brief,” the report notes.
Trump, a second official told the Atlantic, “enjoys” the phone calls, and his team does little to stem the flow of incoming calls. “He knows how to handle the press,” that second official said.
Access to the president has evolved over his second term, according to the report. As his number “began to more widely circulate” last year, “the White House team would privately tell reporters they were not happy with the direct line, and vaguely [warned] that if the phone number was used too often, there could be a cost.”
But, as the Atlantic notes, “Trump made the rules, and Trump liked the calls.”
For now, there’s little indication these brief "mini scoops" — which the Atlantic notes have the power to literally move markets —will cease. “Trump’s aides say there is no indication that the president is annoyed by the constant calls — and, therefore, there are no plans to change the number,” the Atlantic writes.
It “also has no solution to the constant spread of the number, including through suspected horse-trading and black-market sales among influence brokers,” the report adds.
“It’s just wild,” the first administration told the Atlantic.
“It’s out of control,” the second said.