| Kinezi |
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When President-elect Barack Obama called Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen at her Miami district office Wednesday, she hung up on him.
“I thought: ‘Why would Obama want to call a little slug on the planet like me?’ ” said Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican.
A short time later, Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s designated chief of staff, called. Ros-Lehtinen hung up on him, too.
“I thought it was one of the radio stations in South Florida playing an incredible, elaborate, terrific prank on me,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “They got Fidel Castro to go along. They’ve gotten Hugo Chavez and others to fall for their tricks. I said, ‘Oh no, I won’t be punked.’ ”
Ros-Lehtinen was in Miami when she received Obama’s first call about 1 p.m. on her cell phone from a Chicago-based number. The person on the line told Ros-Lehtinen that the president-elect would like to speak to her.
A man, who Ros-Lehtinen said sounded like Obama, got on the line and congratulated her on her re-election and said he was looking forward to working with her as the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The conversation lasted just a minute when Ros-Lehtinen cut Obama off, telling him she wasn’t falling for the hoax and he was a better impersonator than the guy on “Saturday Night Live.”
Then Emanuel called and she hung up on him. It finally took Rep. Howard Berman, a California Democrat and the chairman of the foreign affairs committee, to convince Ros-Lehtinen the president-elect indeed wanted to talk to her.
“I asked Howard to tell me a private joke we share about colleagues in the House to make sure it really was him,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “When he did, I realized it was the real deal.”
Ros-Lehtinen said she then told Berman: “I know this sounds very presumptuous, but please tell President-elect Obama he can call me now and I will take his call.”
Ros-Lehtinen said she now feels like a “bozo,” but is honored that Obama called her. She said it shows his effort to be bipartisan, which she said is especially important in foreign relations.
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