President Donald Trump singled out a female reporter in the Oval Office on Tuesday, calling her over to his desk and saying she had a “nice smile.”
The interaction came during a congratulatory phone call Trump was having with newly elected Ireland prime minister Leo Varadkar.
We have a lot of your Irish press watching us,” Trump said on the call. “They’re just now leaving the room.” At that point, Trump called for RTE reporter Caitriona Perry and asked her to move forward. “And where are you from? Come here, come here. Where are you from?” Trump asked. “We have all of this beautiful Irish press. Where are you from?”
After Perry answered, Trump added to Varadkar, “She has a nice smile on her face, so I bet she treats you well.”
In the aftermath, Perry tweeted video of the interaction and called it a “bizarre moment.” Watch above.
Speaking to RTE after the video went viral, Perry explained how she wound up speaking to Trump. “One minute we were outside the window and the next minute I’m meeting the President of the United States,” Pery said. “Usually we would shoot from outside the window of the White House and that’s what we were expecting today but instead we were invited inside to witness the president’s call to the [prime minister]. When we went in he was already on the phone but I must have caught his eye and he called me over.”