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President Donald Trump’s “White Power” retweet on Sunday morning prompted a frantic, White House crisis response as the racist phrase ignited outrage across the political spectrum. But key Trump advisers were reportedly unable to reach Trump for roughly three hours, as he was at his Virginia golf club and had stopped looking at his phone.

According to NBC News, the mad scramble to do damage control began almost immediately after  Trump characterized as “great people” a video of Trump supporters shouting “white power” at anti-Trump protestors. Condemnation of the white supremacist tweet was swift and bipartisan. But the “five alarm fire,” as NBC News puts it, was hampered by the fact that Trump was unreachable by White House officials.

“Aides also tried unsuccessfully to reach deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino to ask him to delete the retweet,” NBC reported, alluding to the president’s social media manager who often tweets from Trump’s @realdonaldtrump account. “Once officials were able to reach the president, he agreed to delete it.”

After finally reaching the president and informing him of Sen. Tim Scott’s calls to take it down, Trump agreed to delete the offensive tweet. But neither he nor the White House has yet to apologize for endorsing people using a white supremacist chant. Kayleigh McEnany has since defended Trump by claiming the president did not listen to the audio of the original tweet before sharing it with his 82 million Twitter followers.