Longtime listener, first-time caller: Donald Trump.
The president made a surprise call to C-SPAN Monday evening, opening with an unexplained burst of laughter in the background before fielding questions on immigration, the war in Iran and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s possible impeachment.
“It looks like we’ve got a call from the White House, um, Mr. President, welcome to Washington Journal Primetime,” host Mimi Geerges said shortly after the new call-in show debuted at 9 p.m. The show is similar to a daytime version on the network.
As Trump joined the broadcast, a woman could be heard laughing on his end of the line. Her identity was unclear, but that didn’t stop speculation online. “Who’s giggling in the background? Natalie?” one X user wrote, referring to Natalie Harp, the president’s ever-present aide.
The Independent reported last week that Harp has recently taken to screening the president’s incoming phone calls.
Geerges opened by asking Trump, who she’d heard was a C-SPAN viewer, which program he liked to watch.
“Well, I like to watch the call-ins because it gives me a little bit of an indication of where we are,” the 80-year-old president said. “We have some great Republicans calling in, I'm not so sure the Democrats, but the Republicans seem to be…”
Turning to immigration, Geerges noted that Trump had expressed a willingness to work on reform with Democrats, who reclaimed the House and Senate in last week’s midterm elections. She asked if he would halt certain deportations.
“Well, first of all, we stopped the worst inflow of people coming from all over the world, from prisons, from gang members, drug dealers,” Trump said. “And they were pouring in by the millions under [President Joe] Biden.”
Geerges pressed him on the fate of “honest people” who are “trying to make a life and [are] paying their taxes,” including hotel workers, waitresses and farm workers.
“We certainly haven’t put the same push on them as we have on the murderers or the drug dealers,” Trump replied. He then repeated his unsubstantiated claim that people from mental institutions are “being dumped into our country.”
Just days earlier, Trump had promoted Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s hardline immigration agenda, to White House chief of staff.
The conversation then turned to Hegseth. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, filed articles of impeachment against the defense secretary on Monday, setting up a possible vote as early as Tuesday.
Citing a Fox News report that some Republicans could support impeachment, Geerges asked Trump how he would respond.
“Well, I would be disappointed,” Trump said. “Look, Pete has won two wars.”
“We’ve won tremendously Venezuela in 48 minutes, and we’ve taken out hundreds of billions of dollars…It’s a gold mine and we’re doing very well there,” he said. “We won Iran. We wiped out their navy, we wiped out their air force, we wiped out everything.”
But when Geerges asked how much longer the Iran war would last — eight months into the unpopular conflict and with no end in sight — Trump offered no clear timeline.
“It depends, we could knock it out fast or we could knock it out over a short, not a long period of time, you know,” he said, adding that he may target a nuclear enrichment site known as Pickaxe Mountain.
After eight minutes, Geerges hastily thanked Trump for calling in and extended an open invitation to return.
“You do a great job, and good luck with everything,” Trump said before hanging up. “It’s my honor to be one of your early calls.”
Trump, an avid television viewer, has called into news programs in the past. On election night last week, he dialed into Fox News, where he congratulated Democrats on their midterm victories. Since then, he’s reversed course and questioned the integrity of those elections.