Since the United States and Israel launched a joint strike against Iran on Saturday, President Donald Trump has taken a blitz of calls, often dubbed “exclusives,” with a list of eager reporters.
Among the many interviewers: Natalie Allison of The Washington Post, Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times, Kristin Welker and Peter Nicholas of NBC News, Jake Tapper of CNN, Bret Baier and Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News, Jonathan Karl and Rachel Scott of ABC News, Barak Ravid of Axios, Michael Scherer of the Atlantic, Nikki Schwab of the Daily Mail, Jon Levine of the Washington Free Beacon, Mychael Schnell and Laura Barrón-López of MS NOW, Steven Nelson of the New York Post, Connor Stringer of the Telegraph, Dasha Burns of Politico, and Libby Blanca Alon of Israel’s Channel 14 News.
Although Trump has been known to occasionally call reporters or sometimes pick up his cellphone when they call, the poststrike media offensive differs from the traditional executive office playbook. Presidents often make the case for military action to the public in a White House speech, a news conference or by sending administration officials to lay out the administration’s message on Sunday talk shows. In 2013, President Barack Obama sent Secretary of State John F. Kerry to all five major Sunday shows to make the case for Congress authorizing military intervention in Syria.
The White House described the calls as offering intimate access to the president.
“President Trump is the most transparent and accessible President in American history,” White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly wrote in an statement to The Post. “The American people have never had a more direct and authentic relationship with a President of the United States than they have with President Trump.”
But Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland, said the array of direct interviews offers Trump an opportunity to relay his talking points without being subjected to a cross-examination.
“It’s impossible for news outlets to resist playing up the immediacy of an exclusive interview with a president in the midst of battle, no matter how pedestrian his comments may be,” Feldstein said. “This tactic allows Trump to be everywhere all at once, without the formality of an Oval Office address or the pushback of obstreperous questions at a news conference.”
The calls have largely been quick, leaving little time for interrogation. Kanno-Youngs, the New York Times reporter, wrote that his interview with Trump went for “roughly six minutes.” MS NOW had a shorter window — less than a minute. “We were able to ask him a few questions about the strikes in Iran. I’ll note the conversation did not go very long, after about a little less than a minute he said he had to go,” Schnell, one of the reporters on that call, said on air.
The Post’s Allison wrote that her call with the president, which took place shortly after 4 a.m. on Saturday, was “brief.”
The variety of exclusive interviews — to outlets on both sides of the aisle — demonstrates the president making a deliberate campaign intended to sell Americans on U.S. military action against Iran, said Allison Prasch, a University of Wisconsin at Madison professor who studies U.S. presidential rhetoric.
“This is one moment in which Trump seems to understand a diverse media landscape that aligns with the U.S. public in ways that I have not seen him do before,” Prasch said, noting the inclusion of left-leaning outlets implies an attempt to reach beyond his political base.
Leonard Steinhorn, a professor of history and communication at American University, said Trump is using his preferred method of communicating with the press.
“He tends to be a bit more disciplined in one-on-ones than in news conferences, which could be risky given that he often likes to wing it in news conferences,” Steinhorn said.
Prasch said that she’s also struck by what’s absent: a formal address from the Oval Office. “We know that Trump really embraces the trappings of the White House and all the symbolism that comes with it,” Prasch said. “I would also expect that for a major military operation of this scale and scope, Trump would want to be seen as this powerful commander in chief.”
According to multiple people familiar with the interviews, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the high-stakes conversations, reporters have largely called Trump — not the other way around.
One White House reporter, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the calls carry an inherent tension: Trump can end them at any moment and move on to the next outlet. “He’s going to end it as soon as he doesn’t want to talk to you anymore,” said the reporter, who was not among those who interviewed Trump about Iran. “The first question that might put him there — you’re reluctant to ask, because you want to get as much as you can before you get to the difficult ones.”
The dynamic has played out on live air. In 2022, Trump abruptly hung up on NPR host Steve Inskeep mid-interview after Inskeep pressed him on election fraud claims. “So Steve, thank you very much. I appreciate it,” Trump said. Immediately, the line went dead.
“ That was wild. A live interview — and he hung up because he wasn’t going to talk about it,” the White House reporter recalled. “He’s known to do that. He will do it. He’s done it.”
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