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If everyone can call the president, does it matter if anyone does? It sounds like a koan but isn’t that far from reality. Donald Trump’s personal cell phone number has been making the rounds among Washington reporters, dozens of whom have used it over the past few weeks to score brief interview after brief interview with the leader of the free world about his ongoing war with Iran. A partial list of media organizations that have published “exclusive” or “scoop”-y quotes after hitting up Trump’s iPhone includes leading print publications like the New York Times, TV networks (ABC, NBC, PBS, and CNN), foreign newspapers (the Daily Telegraph and Times of Israel), and no fewer than four outlets with “Washington” in their names (the Post, Examiner, Reporter, and Free Beacon).

This cascade of cold-calling is a change from Trump’s first term, when White House staffers largely succeeded in gatekeeping the president’s personal number from prying journalists. But this time around the secret is increasingly out. Some reporters have gotten Trump’s digits through the grapevine or from colleagues; at least one simply asked him. Trump’s willingness to pick up has led to off-the-cuff interviews about the U.S. military operation that captured Venezuela’s leader, prospects for peace between Russia and Ukraine, his endorsement in the Republican Senate primary in Texas, and more. According to the Atlantic, getting ahold of Trump has become easy enough that his number is now subject to bidding and bartering among lobbyists, CEOs, world leaders, celebrities, and presumably anybody else looking to worm their way into the most powerful ear on earth.

In some ways, the collective scramble to get Trump on the horn recalls the press corps’ worst instincts during the 2016 election: Giving Trump a platform to say whatever he likes without the context and fact-checking that should come between a newsmaker and a journalistic audience. Now, it seems, the chief barrier is whether Trump picks up. (He doesn’t always, as Semafor media journalist Max Tani discovered firsthand, a fact that has created a parallel whisper network of journalists trying to suss out the best times of day to reach the president.)

Journalists, at least in theory, have a responsibility to the public when it comes to capturing a president’s words. And when Trump does answer, it can have real economic and geopolitical consequences—at least temporarily. The ur-example happened last week, when Trump told Weijia Jiang, a CBS News White House reporter, that the Iran war was “very complete, pretty much.” His remarks rocketed around social media, arresting sliding stocks and taming spiking oil prices. In the end, though, they weren’t worth the pixels they were posted on. Trump publicly reversed himself less than two hours later, pledging to continue the fight. Since then, oil has risen, markets have slumped, and the war has continued. As of Sunday, Tani counted nine different phone interviews in which Trump gave reporters nine different answers about when it might end (including “two or three days,” “four or five weeks,” and a “six-week period”). There’s both “practically nothing left to target” and enough to “knock the hell out of” Kharg Island, Iran’s main hub for exporting oil.

So why do reporters keep calling? You can make the argument that a president’s words—even this president’s words—are worth reporting. From an accountability standpoint, ringing Trump up and broadcasting what he says makes some sense; if he claims the war is over only for it to continue, voters could choose to punish him or his party for lying, breaking a promise, or falling short. But plenty of journalists seem to be confusing access with newsworthiness. This may have something to do with recent history: Some have contrasted the relative ease of getting Trump to answer their questions with the challenges of doing so under Joe Biden. The White House regularly describes Trump as “the most transparent and accessible president in history.”

All of that access can feel like a balm for the ever-embattled press, a deserved return to pride of place. (“We’re so back,” one journalist reportedly whispered during the first press conference of Trump’s second term.) And interviewing a sitting president has long conferred prestige, which might well feel paramount amid shrinking audiences and newsroom layoffs. Even in abnormal political times, competition can be healthy, spurring journalists to match or outdo rival outlets. But in this case, reporters seem to be herding without much to show for it. Bari Weiss, the right-leaning opinion journalist who is now CBS News’ editor in chief, bragged last week that the network was “on quite a roll” in an X thread that cited Jiang’s Trump interview. But by the time Weiss posted about it, Jiang’s interview had been obsolete for days. A president’s words aren’t worth much if he’s just going to say something else to the next reporter who calls. And like usual, Trump has found a way to turn the joke on us. According to Tani, Trump’s buzzing iPhone has become a source of amusement at the White House. The president sometimes messes with the reporters on the line or lets people around him eavesdrop on speakerphone.

Trump, a longtime attention hog, has found other ways to air his contradictions about the war, from impromptu press conferences to tirades on Truth Social. Even so, some observers have concluded that landing a phone interview with Trump is effectively pointless, an invitation to get played by a president who—much as he did back when he was just a go-to quote for New York City tabloid reporters—treats his interactions with the press like a game.

As the Iran War Fallout Widens, Trump Seems to Be Turning to an Old Tactic. He’s in for a Rude Awakening.

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Still, there is one thing all these calls make clear. Yes, much of what Trump is telling the American people about the war—through journalists, online, and in public—is contradictory. Inconsistencies and flip-flops are usually a sign of a president trying to hide something. But in this case, each self-negating reportorial nugget, public waffle, and social media screed helps illuminate a basic reality about the president’s plan for Iran: namely, that he doesn’t seem to have one. That’s why he keeps contradicting himself. It’s a bit like an assortment of individual tiles that collectively add up to a mosaic. When taken together, the picture that emerges—even without dialing Trump up—is of a commander in chief white-knuckling his way through one bear market or bad news cycle at a time without thinking much about what comes next. Far from obscuring the truth, the president’s many phone calls with reporters reveal it—you just have to zoom out far enough.

That broad picture also matches what’s trickled out from more standard forms of journalistic sleuthing: that Trump failed to heed warnings about how aggressively Iran might hit back; didn’t appreciate Iran’s capacity to rain down drones and missiles on its regional neighbors; didn’t court U.S. allies or make a coherent public case for the war; and underestimated how all of it could affect gas prices, which Trump has repeatedly touted as a barometer of his administration’s economic stewardship. Exactly why the president didn’t do those things remains unclear. Maybe he’s spending too much time on the phone.

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