President Elect Barack Obama, called twice to Illena Ros-Lehtinen, and she hung up. She recieved the call twice by Mr. Obama and both the times she hung up as she didnt believe it was the President. The Republican Congresswoman had recieved the call from a Chicago based number and an aide had informed her that Mr. Barack Obama wanted to speak with her. As Mr. Obama came on the line and introduced himself, she replied, "I'm sorry but I think this is a joke from one of the South Florida Radio Stations know for these type of pranks.", and she hung up. Some moments later, Mr. Obama tried calling again from his soon to be chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, but she hang up again. Mr. Emanuel had just delivered, "Illena, I canno believe you hung up on the President Elect.", to which she just hanged up the phone.
The call came about 1 p.m. Obama congratulated her on her re-elections and said that he was looking forward to working with her as the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
A short time later, The Chairman Of The Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Howard Berman, called Illena and told her that it was actually Mr. Obama calling her and she has hunged up on him twice. Thereafter Mr. Obama called her again and this time it was successful. What a big blunder by Illena.
"It is very funny that you have twice hung up on me." Mr. Obama told her, to which Illena replied, that these type of calls were always made by radio stations in South Florida and it always ended up to be a joke.
"You are either very gracious to reach out in such a bipartisan manner or had run out of folks to call if you are truly calling me and Saturday Night Live could use a good Obama impersonator like you," Illena Ros-Lehtinen joked with the president-elect.
Mr. Obama had a good conversation and she congratulated him for his victory despite how hard she had campaigned for his opponent, Sen. John McCain. He didn't even blame her for mistaking him for a radio-station prank, she said, as Mr. Obama told Chicago based stations do the same. "He laughed a lot, saying in Chicago they do it all the time. I don't blame you for being skeptical."
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