[UPDATE BELOW]: Once upon a time, if you had a problem with something the President was doing, you could call up the White House's public comments line and complain to a staffer about it. Whether or not that grievance got heard is up for debate, but at least you could try. Of course, President Trump doesn't want to hear your SAD LOSER WHINING, so that public comments line got shut down, and folks with problems are urged to send messages through Facebook Messenger or whitehouse.gov/comment, where they are certain to disappear into the ether. As an alternative, an anonymous group of concerned citizens have compiled a resource full of White House phone numbers, so you can flood Team Trump with all of your outraged feedback.
The resource, cheekily dubbed "White House Comment Line," was aggregated by an anonymous group who wanted to make sure the public could still send a message to the White House. "Open communication is the foundation of a good, functioning democracy," a spokesperson for the group told Gothamist in a statement. "But it's a two-way street. Right now there's 'information' coming out of the White House to the people, but not much the other way around. They may have shut down the comment line, but we the people still have comments. In light of that, we wanted to create one way for the people to be heard."
The group that collected the numbers intentionally excluded any they believed had a role in national security, because they said they wanted to avoid disrupting them and keep the focus on transparency and domestic accountability. A solid chunk of the numbers were disconnected, probably during the Obama-to-Trump transition, but it's possible they'll be put back in use if Trump ever gets around to hiring White House staffers. We've been calling the numbers on the list and have found a few fun ones—somewhere in there you'll get a voice mailbox belonging to one "Conway, Kellyanne." See if you can leave her a message before it's disconnected.
Here are the ones that work, so far:
+1 (202) 456-1259
+1 (202) 456-1260
+1 (202) 456-3323
+1 (202) 456-3376
+1 (202) 395-1194
+1 (202) 456-1565
+1 (202) 395-1608
+1 (202) 456-2046
+1 (202) 456-2500
+1 (202) 456-4640
+1 (202) 456-3256
+1 (202) 456-3878
+1 (202) 395-1480
+1 (202) 456-3450
+1 (202) 456-4655
+1 (202) 456-4770
+1 (202) 456-1781
+1 (202) 456-2395
+1 (202) 395-4840
+1 (202) 456-3248
+1 (202) 456-4391
+1 (202) 456-7560
+1 (202) 456-4348
+1 (202) 456-3443
+1 (202) 456-2975
+1 (202) 456-3255
+1 (202) 456-4708
+1 (202) 456-3873
+1 (202) 456-6758
+1 (202) 456-5979
+1 (202) 456-4257
+1 (202) 456-4384
+1 (202) 456-5849
+1 (202) 456-4319
+1 (202) 456-4759
+1 (202) 456-5677
+1 (202) 456-1125
+1 (202) 456-4761
+1 (202) 456-4687
+1 (202) 456-4747
+1 (202) 456-2357
+1 (202) 456-4265
The group hopes that people will use the resource to let staffers know how they feel about certain policies to "demand fairness and transparency in the policy making process." They recommend you call as many numbers as you can until you reach someone. "Just like you would call your member of Congress, calmly share your views with the White House. You have the right to be heard," the spokesperson told us.
Update 2/1: Alas, it appears most of these numbers have since been taken out of service, but feel free to keep trying just in case!
