When Democratic Rep.Debbie Dingellgot a call from someone purporting to be aWashington Postreporter in December 2019, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was actuallyDonald Trumpon the other end of the line.
JournalistMaggie Habermanrecounts the story in her new book,Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.
In the book, Haberman writes that Dingell — a Michigan representative whose late husband,John Dingell, also served in Congress until 2015 — answered a call from a man who “identified himself as aWashington Postreporter, and said he knew her husband from his investigations in Congress.”
The call came around the same time that Trump, at a campaign rally,implied that Dingell’s late husband was in hell.
According to the book, “The man asked Dingell if she waslooking for an apology from Trump. No, she replied, merely that people could be civil to one another. As the man talked, Dingell couldn’t shake the idea that his voice sounded like that of the forty-fifth president.”
Trump has been faced with accusations of posing as others in the past. In 2016,The Washington Postpublished an article claiming Trump regularly gave interviews in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s while posing as a spokesman alternatively named John Miller or John Barron.
ThePostreleased arecording of a 1991 interviewbetween PEOPLE magazine reporter Sue Carswell and Trump’s alleged publicist — John Miller — whom thePostclaimed was really just Trump in disguise.
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On the recording, the man offers an explanation for why Trump broke up with his then-live-in girlfriendMarla Maplesfor the Italian modelCarla Bruni. “He really didn’t want to make a commitment,” the person purporting to be Miller says on the tape. “He’s coming out of a marriage, and he’s starting to do tremendously well financially.”
Miller can also be heard telling Carswell that “actresses just call to see if they can go out with [Trump] and things” and that Madonna “wanted to go out with him.”
Trumpadamantly deniedever posing as his own spokesperson after the story broke, but the now-former president told Carswell a different story in 1991.
“He said that he was sorry that he made the call, that was a joke that went awry,” she explained in a 2016 interview withABC7, adding, “It shows he’s a liar right now. And that distresses me.”
source: people.com
