Columnist recounts trying to hang up on Trump during 'very strange' phone call

A British columnist's phone call with Trump was so "strange" that he began looking for a way to end it.

Financial Times columnist Ed Luce recounted the interaction during an episode of The Mona Charen Show. Luce said that, at the request of his editor, he called Trump around the start of the Iran war.

"I wondered about the usefulness of this," Luce said about the call, which he described as "very strange." The call even reminded him of "Alice in Wonderland," Luce said.

Luce said that he had called Trump before, saying, "He's perfectly friendly. He answers my questions, and sometimes talks for quite a long time."

In this phone call, Trump "started repeating himself" after 15 minutes, Luce said. "I contrived to end the call, which I never expected. I said, 'Mr. President, I know you're really busy.'"

Luce said Trump started to ask him questions about the Iran war, like, "Should I take the oil? Should I take Kharg Island?"

"The response I gave was, 'I'm not qualified to answer that, Mr. President,' and I tried finding out, 'Is this an option you're considering?'" Luce said. "But it became very clear to me, and everyone else really, by about between the 7th and 10th of March, very early on into Operation Epic Fury, that he was looking for an offramp."

However, the show's host, conservative writer Mona Charen, added that "people who are members of his golf club" say that Trump often asks for advice from random people.

"He would just bump into people on the links, and he would say to any random golfer, 'So what should I do about North Korea and the nukes?'" Charen said. "It's just mindboggling."