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Dec 4, 2008 12:02 pm US/Eastern
Ros-Lehtinen Hangs Up On Obama, Thinks Its A Prank
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
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U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
AP
When a man sounding remarkably like President-elect Barack Obama called a South Florida congresswoman Wednesday, she assumed it was a crank call.
So Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen hung up. But this was no prank.
"You're making fun of men because I fell for the joke, so let me save you the trouble, and he's interrupting me. He's saying, 'This is Barack Obama.' And I said, 'Yeah, that's right, look, forget it' and boom, I hung up on him," Ros-Lehtinen told
CBS4 news.
She thought it was one of the radio stations in South Florida playing an incredibly elaborate, prank. "They got Fidel Castro to go along. They've gotten Hugo Chavez and others to fall for their tricks. I said, 'Oh, no, I won't be punked."'
Obama called her to congratulate her on her re-election, saying he was looking forward to working with her as the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs committee.
The conversation lasted about a minute when she cut Obama off, telling him she wasn't falling for the hoax and that he was a better impersonator than the guy on Saturday Night Live, she said.
Then Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, called the congresswoman to tell her it wasn't a joke. But she hung up on him, too. It took a call from Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, to persuade Ros-Lehtinen that Obama really did want to talk to her.
When the two finally talked, Ros-Lehtinen said she and Obama had a good conversation and she congratulated him for his victory despite how hard she campaigned for his opponent, Sen. John McCain.
He didn't even blame her for mistaking him for a radio-station prank, she said.
"He laughed a lot, saying in Chicago they do it all the time," Ros-Lehtinen said. "He said, 'I don't blame you for being skeptical."'
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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