Gary Cohn Faked a Bad Connection to End Call with Trump, Senator Says

While Donald Trump was trekking through Asia earlier this month, his top economic adviser Gary Cohn met with a group of Democratic senators to talk about tax reform, the most important item currently before Congress. About 30 minutes in, Cohn took a call from Trump—but when the conversation dragged on too long, he faked a bad connection to get out of it, according to Democratic Senator Tom Carper, who was at the meeting and described it in an on-air interview with CNN.

About 15 minutes into the call, Carper said, he turned to Cohn and advised him to cut the president short. "We’re not going to have a real conversation here," Carper said in an interview on Capitol Hill. "Can’t you just tell the president that he is brilliant and say we’re losing… the connection and then hang up?”

As he tells it, Cohn took his advice.

"Fifteen minutes later, the president is still talking," Carper told CNN. "I said, 'Gary, why don't you do this, just take… your cellphone back and just say, Mr. President, you're brilliant! But we're losing contact, and I think we're going to lose you now, so goodbye.'"

"And that's what he did," Carper added, "and he hung up."

The White House released a statement calling Carper's account "completely false."

"Gary Cohn took the phone off speaker and continued to speak with the president privately for several minutes before they concluded the call," Raj Shah, a White House spokesperson, told CNBC.

Cohn still hasn't publicly weighed in on the mini-controversy, which feels a little like a scene out of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which might actually prove useful here. An accidental text on purpose could be just the thing Cohn needs to put himself in the clear.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.