White House adviser used the oldest trick in the book to avoid talking to Trump

Gary Cohn is the White House's director of the National Economic Council.

The former president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs (or swamp king extraordinaire to a Trump supporter pre-2016) received a severance package of around $285 million mostly in stock, upon leaving the organisation to join the Trump administration.

He's now the man in charge of the NEC, which considers economic policy matters and was created by Bill Clinton in 1993 to put economic consideration at the forefront of federal policy making.

He serves at the pleasure of Donald Trump as his full job title is:

Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director of the National Economic Council

So he probably shouldn't be dodging Mr. Trump's calls.

Delaware Democrat Senator Tom Carper said on CNN Wednesday that during a meeting on tax reform between administration officials and Democrat senators, Trump called in from Asia and began talking.

Mr Carper explained:

Fifteen minutes later the president is still talking and I said to Gary — we’re all sitting around this big square table and I said, Gary, why don’t you do this, why don’t you just take your cell phone back and just say ‘Mr. President, you’re brilliant but we’re losing contact and I think we’re gonna lose you now so good-bye.’

And that’s what he did, and he hung up.

CNN's John Berman asked whether Cohn actually did pull the "bad reception" trick, to which Carper replied:

Well, I wouldn’t — I don’t want to throw him under the bus, but yes.

HT New York Magazine

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