In a strange turn, Donald Trump has reached out to progressive democrat Elizabeth Warren, who the president once called “a mean, horrible human being.” The senator from Massachusetts delivered a lengthy speech on Monday, January 12, where she addressed the affordability crisis while criticizing her own party for being too close with its wealthy donors. The speech was vocal enough that the president felt the need to make a phone call to Warren, as Trump attempts to shift his messaging to affordability before the upcoming midterm elections.
Elizabeth Warren presses president on his campaign promise on credit cards
Warren shared some details on what Donald Trump said his private phone call to her, as noted by both the senator and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt (via NBC News).
“I delivered this same message on affordability to him directly,” the senator said. “I told him that Congress can pass legislation to cap credit card rates if he will actually fight for it. I also urged him to get House Republicans to pass the bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act, which passed the Senate with unanimous support and would build more housing and lower costs.”
The legislation in question is Trump’s push to have a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, which is one of the promises he made during his presidential campaign. While he wasn’t able to enact this policy yet in the first year of his second term, he has pressed the issue in a post on Truth Social.
“Please be informed that we will no longer let the American Public be ‘ripped off’ by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” the president wrote. “AFFORDABILITY! Effective January 20, 2026, I, as President of the United States, am calling for a one year cap on Credit Card Interest Rates of 10%.”
Trump noted that January 20 would mark the one-year anniversary of his second term as president.
Leavitt confirmed that Trump made the exchange with Warren on the fly, describing the conversation as “a good call,” per The Daily Beast. “He heard about the speech and said, ‘Let me call her,” she said.
According to The Washington Post, this is the first time that the president has contacted Elizabeth Warren through a direct phone call. This came after the senator excoriated Trump in her speech for “doing not one damn thing” on the housing crisis and being largely “missing in action” on his credit card proposal. She accused the president as a “wannabe dictator” who is worsening the economic crisis with his tariffs and lack of action on health insurance.
Trump’s pivot toward the issue of affordability, despite him calling it hoax by the Democratic Party, has been clear in recent months, in part after his meeting with New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani in November.
It’s unclear how long this unlikely alliance will last, though, given the fraught history between the 79-year-old president and the 76-year-old senator. In his first term, Trump gave Warren the nickname “Pocahontas” after she claimed that she had Native American ancestry. Last year in August, he called her “a mean, horrible human being” during his remarks at the Oval Office. Then in several posts on social media, he was proud that he “blew up her terrible Presidential Campaign” and said “she lies about everything.”
Warren has since continued to address the issue of affordability. In December she, along with Senator Bernie Sanders, criticized the proposed merger between Netflix and Warner Bros. She called the deal “an anti-monopoly nightmare” that would “force Americans into higher subscription prices and fewer choices over what and how they watch, while putting American workers at risk.”
