Jared Kushner may have allowed an obviously fake prank caller to talk to Donald Trump

The especially depressing thing about this whole fuck-up is how very little effort Melendez and his crew actually had to put into the hoax; at one point, they had to remind themselves to confirm the first name of the guy (New Jersey senator Robert Menendez) that Melendez was pretending to be, and managed to brush off the fact that they were calling from a California phone number with a single line about “vacation.” None of which apparently stopped them from convincing Trump’s team to have him give them a call back from Air Force One.

Trump—who, weirdly enough, Melendez actually knows, since our current president used to be a staple on Stern—was actually pretty normal, for a given value of “normal,” tossing out some pretty standard right-wing rhetoric about immigration tactics. Per the THR article: “Politico reports White House insiders are baffled by the incident and are trying to figure out how it wasn’t stopped.”

You can hear Melendez’s account of the call, including his alleged conversation with Trump, here.