White House adviser Gary Cohn faked a bad cellphone connection to get President Trump off the line in a conversation with Senate Democrats on tax reform, Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware charged Wednesday.
The Democrat said in an interview with CNN that he was one of a handful of Democrats engaged with administration officials during Trump’s Asia trip when Trump called in through Cohn.
“Nice of him to do that,” Carper said, recounting the conversation. “Fifteen minutes later, the president’s still talking. And I said to Gary … why don’t you do this, why don’t you take the phone, your cellphone back and just say: ‘Mr. President you’re brilliant. But we’re losing contact and I think we’re going to lose you now, so goodbye.’ And that’s what he did, and he hung up. And then we went back to having the conversation that we needed to.”
Democratic Sen. Tom Carper says White House economic adviser Gary Cohn faked a bad connection to get President Trump off the phone so they could have a conversation on tax reform without him https://t.co/qcUnSEsysl
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) November 22, 2017
Asked directly if Cohn faked the bad connection to get the president off the phone, Carper responded, “I don’t want to throw him under the bus, but yes … he was interested in the greater good.”
The White House disputed Carper’s account of the call. “Senator Carper’s claim is completely false,” said principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah. “Gary Cohn took the phone off speaker and continued to speak with the President privately for several minutes before they concluded the call.”
Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, is tasked with organizing the president’s economic initiatives and has played a key role in developing the GOP tax plan. His personal relationship with Trump, though, has been complicated ever since he criticized the president’s equivocal reaction to the racism-driven violence in Charlottesville, Va., in August.
Carper said the conversation on tax issues was productive.
So far, no Senate Democrats have joined in supporting the Republican tax plan, which would cut taxes by around $1.5 trillion. The Trump administration has said it hopes to get several Democratic votes on the final package, and Trump himself has traveled to the states of Democrats who could be vulnerable in 2018 to try to pressure them into supporting the tax push.
