Comedian Apparently Tricks Trump Into Prank Phone Call

Earlier this week, Donald Trump found himself in a very familiar position, thanks to his inexperienced senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The Celebrity-in-Chief became the butt of a joke on Thursday after Kushner routed a fake phone call through from comedian John Melendez, who was pretending to be Sen. Robert Menendez. 

“I find it astounding that the news media’s not picking up the fact that I totally duped the President & got in touch within less than 2 hours while he was on Air Force One,” Melendez tweeted. “Shame on, NBC, CNN & Huffington Post. I gave them a news story on their laps.” 

In the wake of the incident, White House sources told Politico that its staff is now scrambling to figure out how it even happened. According to the publication, since Kushner transferred the call, which initiated the return phone call from the president, it was not routed through the legislative affairs office.

Although the office was able to confirm that the New Jersey Democrat was not trying to get in touch with Trump, the call was still put through via Kushner, the source added. It was also recorded and later published on Melendez’s podcast. 

“Hi, Bob. How are you? Congratulations on everything, we’re proud of you,” Trump said, allegedly. “Congratulations, great job. You went through a tough, tough situation, and I don’t think a very fair situation, but congratulations.”

However, the recording has yet to be confirmed authentic. 

On Friday afternoon, Menendez released a statement, subtly referencing the alleged conversation between the comedian and the Celebrity-in-Chief. 

“As someone who has spent my entire career trying to convince Republications to join me in reforming our nation’s broken immigration system,” he said, “I welcome any opportunity to have a real conversation with the president on how to uphold the American values that guided our family-based immigration policy for the past century. Tearing children apart from their mothers is not part of our proud history. Thus far, this White House has only sabotaged very good-faith effort to find bipartisan common ground on immigration.”