- Rep. Debbie Dingell suspects Trump may have posed as a reporter to call her, per a forthcoming book.
- In "Confidence Man," NYT reporter Maggie Haberman detailed how Dingell thought the caller sounded like Trump.
- Trump insulted Dingell's late husband at a Dec. 2019 rally. She responded by praising her husband's service.
After Rep. Debbie Dingell received a phone call in December 2019 from an individual claiming to be a Washington Post reporter with an unknown number, the congresswoman began to suspect that the person was President Donald Trump, according to a forthcoming book by New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman.
In the book "Confidence Man," Haberman detailed how the Michigan Democratic lawmaker said she received a call, where the person on the line asked if she wanted an apology from Trump, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
"When she answered, the man on the other end identified himself as a Washington Post reporter, and said he knew her husband from his investigations in Congress. The name he gave was not one she recognized," Haberman wrote.
She continued: "The man asked Dingell if she was looking for an apology from Trump. No, she replied, merely that people could be civil to one another. As the man talked, Dingell couldn't shake the idea that his voice sounded like that of the forty-fifth president."
Trump's office didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
In late 2019, Trump suggested that Dingell's late husband, the veteran Rep. John Dingell of Michigan who died in 2019 at age 92, was in hell.
Trump floated the idea during a campaign rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, in December 2019, regaling the MAGA crowd with a story about a phone call in which Debbie Dingell purportedly gushed about how much she appreciated Trump ordering flags be flown at half-mast in honor of the passing of the longest serving member in congressional history.
"John would be so thrilled. He's looking down, he'd be so thrilled. Thank you so much sir," Trump said of Debbie Dingell's supposed reaction, before slipping in the dig, "Maybe he's looking up, I don't know."
That same day, Debbie Dingell voted to move forward with Trump's first impeachment trial.
Shortly after the rally, the congresswoman spoke out against Trump's remarks, stating that his comments affected her "in a way you can never imagine."
"Mr. President, let's set politics aside. My husband earned all his accolades after a lifetime of service," Dingell said at the time.
"I'm preparing for the first holiday season without the man I love. You brought me down in a way you can never imagine and your hurtful words just made my healing much harder," she added.
On Wednesday, Haberman recounted Dingell's remarks about the phone call on Twitter, noting that quotes from the call "never appeared in a story."
In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, New York journalists say they received numerous calls from Trump pretending to be his own publicist.