'He just picks up': Trump and the lawmakers he loves to talk to on the phone
One surprise call came from Air Force One as President Trump was leaving Iraq, startling Sen. James M. Inhofe (R) as he was chopping wood back home in rural Oklahoma with his grandson. When Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) recently stepped off a plane, a White House voice mail was waiting for him, saying Trump was “available for the rest of the evening” for another round of their regular phone conversations.
Another recent call from Trump — this time, to Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) — was so unexpected that he crashed a Skype session between Manchin and a group of West Virginia high school students.
The chatterbox in chief has eschewed the traditional way that presidents communicate with members of Congress, calling lawmakers at all hours of the day without warning and sometimes with no real agenda. Congressional Republicans reciprocate in kind, increasingly dialing up the president directly to gauge his thinking after coming to terms with the fact that ultimately, no one speaks for Trump but Trump himself.
“I never called President Bush or President Obama,” said Barrasso, who has served in the Senate since 2007. “I just feel comfort in calling President Trump. He calls me regularly to talk about issues. He’s always helpful for both of us.”
Longtime senators who have served through multiple administrations say they have never seen a president so easily accessible to lawmakers. The calls are part of what occupies the wide swaths of “executive time” on Trump’s schedule — an unstructured stretch of the day he uses to call allies and hold meetings that are otherwise not publicly announced.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — whom Trump has called while the Kentucky Republican was attending a Nationals baseball game — is among the most frequent of the president’s phone partners. But Trump also speaks often with Sens. David Perdue (R-Ga.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), according to people familiar with the conversations.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/he-just-picks-up-trump-and-the-lawmakers-he-loves-to-talk-to-on-the-phone/ar-BBTOp1k?li=BBnb7Kz
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Is usually more useful. In his case, not so much.
To remind them what he and Putin have on them, and remind them that betraying him would piss Putin off, and we all know that would not be good! 