Comedian Prank Calls President Trump on His Podcast While Impersonating Senator

Comedian John Melendez reportedly got through to the leader of the free world with a prank call on Wednesday.

Melendez hosts the Stuttering John Podcast, and this week he posed as a senator’s assistant in order to get connected with President Donald Trump directly. In the recording, Melendez called the standard White House switchboard number, which he says he found on Google. After only vaguely explaining who he was and why he was calling, the president’s staff connected him to Trump himself on Air Force One.

Melendez pretended to be an assistant for Democratic New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez. He did little to disguise his voice or his thick Long Island accent, yet no one at the White House seemed to question his credentials very far. He was shortly transferred straight to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and one of his chief advisers.

After that, Melendez says that he simply waited a few minutes and President Trump called him back from Air Force One. He called Melendez’s personal cell phone, and apparently assumed that he was speaking directly to Senator Menendez himself.

“Hi Bob. How are you, congratulations on everything. We’re proud of you,” President Trump’s voice says in the recording. “Congratulations, great job. You went through a tough, tough situation and I don’t think a very fair situation, but congratulations.”
He was likely referring to Menendez’s New Jersey primary on Thursday, which he won by a narrow margin.

Melendez then freely spoke to the president about all manner of political topics — including the impending Supreme Court nominee and President Trump’s family separation policy.

“My constituents are giving me a lot of beef about this immigration thing,” the comedian told the president.

“Bob, let me just tell you, I want to be able to take care of the situation every bit as much as anybody else at the top level,” Trump said. He told Melendez that he hopes to “do a real immigration bill” rather than “the smaller solution — you know, they are doing them step-by-step.”

As for the Supreme Court seat, Melendez offered his fictional helping hand, saying: “I promise you, I will help if you don’t go too conservative, you know what I’m saying.” The president then promised to discuss the nominee with Melendez.

“Baba Booey to you,” Melendez said in farewell. The comedian was floored by the fact that he got away with the prank. In subsequent interviews on CNN and other news networks, he said that he had met the president on many occasions while working with Howard Stern, and had even dined with him and Melania Trump at one point.

The White House has not commented on the prank, and its authenticity is still being verified. However, Annie Carni of Politico reported on Friday that Trump administration staffers are “scrambling to figure out how this happened.”

As for the real Senator Bob Menendez, he did not exactly condemn the prank. In a statement given to PEOPLE he said he welcomes “any opportunity to have a real conversation with the president on how to uphold the American values that have guided our family-based immigration policy for the past century.”

“Tearing children apart from their mothers is not part of our proud history,” he went on. “Thus far, this White House has only sabotaged every good-faith effort to find bipartisan common ground on immigration.”