Source : NEW INDIAN EXPRESS NEWS
Writers Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer of The Atlantic say they’ve learned one thing during their years of covering President Donald Trump: His first word is rarely his last one.
That’s obvious from their circuitous journey in landing interviews with the Republican president, which included an apparent late-night “butt dial” and Trump’s unexpected invitation to include in the session their editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, whom Trump had bashed as a “sleazeball” weeks earlier.
That last interview, this past Thursday, sparked a true “stop the presses” moment. The Atlantic had already sent Parker and Scherer’s piece, the cover story for its June issue, to the printers. They called it back to add new material.
The article, titled “Trump is Enjoying This” and published online Monday, was in the works before Goldberg was inadvertently included in a Signal chat group among administration leaders about a military attack in the Middle East.
The interview wasn’t supposed to happen
The writers, who recently joined The Atlantic from The Washington Post, had pitched an interview to talk about the details of Trump’s improbable political comeback. He was willing to talk, but on March 17 — during the week they were supposed to meet — Trump posted on social media that Parker was a “Radical Left Lunatic” incapable of doing a fair interview. Scherer’s past pieces about him were, Trump wrote, “virtually all LIES.”
The interview was off. The writers surmised in their article that someone in Trump’s camp had persuaded him not to do it.
At 10:45 a.m. on a Saturday in late March, Scherer — armed with Trump’s cellphone number — called him anyway. “Who’s calling?” Trump asked. Scherer identified himself.
“Oh, I know who you are, Michael,” Trump replied, according to a tape released by The Atlantic. “I know who you are. You never write — you never write good about me, Michael. Never, ever.”
And he proceeded to give Scherer an interview on the spot.
SOURCE :- NEW INDIAN EXPRESS
