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WASHINGTON – Amid breaking news of a U.S.-Mexico trade deal, President Donald Trump invited reporters into the Oval Office on Monday to punctuate the moment in an unusual way: allowing them to sit in on a celebratory phone chat with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.

But when he punched a button on a phone, the line was dead.

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“Enrique?” Trump said, with television cameras rolling. There was no response. “You can hook him up,” he called out to aides. “You tell me when. This is a big deal. A lot of people are waiting.”

The audience, including top White House advisers and Mexican diplomats, would have to wait a touch longer – “Hellooo,” the president tried again. “Do you want to put that on this phone please? Hellooo?” – before an aide finally took the receiver and patched Pena Nieto through.

The awkward, real-time sequence in the Oval Office offered another example of Trump’s willingness to discard protocol and conduct his presidency like a reality show playing out in real time, conscripting those around him in service of the spectacle.