A few hours after President-elect Donald Trump was briefed by intelligence officials about Russian meddling in the election, an Associated Press reporter called his cellphone seeking an interview.
The call went to voicemail and the reporter did not leave a message. About an hour later, Trump called back.
It’s hard to imagine many politicians — particularly one about to become president of the United States — calling back an unknown number on their cellphone.
With Trump, it’s simply how business gets done, whether he’s fielding calls from real estate partners and longtime friends or foreign leaders and congressional lawmakers in the weeks after the election.
But as Trump prepares to take the oath of office Friday, the future of his ever-present Android smartphone is now a matter of national security. On Thursday, he told a friend that he had given up his phone, as security agencies had urged him to do. It was unclear whether he was following the lead of President Barack Obama, the nation’s first cellphone-toting president, who exchanged his personal device for a Blackberry heavily modified for security purposes.
