BBC News journalist Gary O’Donoghue has admitted he accidentally put the phone down on Donald Trump ahead of the UK broadcaster’s first exclusive interview with a U.S. president in a decade.
O’Donoghue, the BBC’s chief North America Correspondent, said he was asleep when he received a call from the White House and fumbled his phone when answering.
The vastly experienced reporter, who is blind, was granted the interview to mark a year since the assassination attempt on Trump near Butler, Pennsylvania, last year.
O’Donoghue was covering the rally and won plaudits for this reporting, including from Trump, who said during the interview that the BBC covered it fairly and it was a “great honor” to speak to the journalist.
O’Donoghue said they had a “few false starts” in making the interview happen, and he was resigned to it not taking place. He returned home and, in the evening, fell asleep.
“The phone woke me up and one of his top aides said, ‘Hi Gary, the president’s on the line for you now,’ and I had to run into the living room, grab a digital recorder and do what I could,” O’Donoghue said.
He continued: “When I woke up, I accidentally hung up the call to start with, which is not good is it when you hang up on the president. Anyway, they rang back.”
“I pressed go on a little recorder of mine, I prayed that I had pressed go, and I had pressed go, and we got the interview. I was trying to think at a million miles an hour. We were told we would have five minutes, we ended up with 20.”
Gary O’Donoghue
O’Donoghue caught the president in a reflective mood. He remembered the silence after the Butler shooting and refusing a stretcher. “I like to think about it as little as possible,” he added.
Asked if he trusts Vladimir Putin, he replied: “I trust almost no one.” He added: “We’ll have a great conversation. I’ll say: ‘That’s good, I’ll think we’re close to getting it done,’ and then he’ll knock down a building in Kyiv.”
He also praised UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “I really like the prime minister a lot, even though he is a liberal,” Trump added. Asked what he wanted to achieve during his state visit to the UK in September, the president said: “Have a good time and respect King Charles, because he’s a great gentleman.”
The exchange marked the first time a sitting U.S. president had granted an exclusive interview to BBC News since Barack Obama spoke with Jon Sopel in 2015.
Trump has spoken to the British media in the past, but has favored conversations with friends, including Piers Morgan on TalkTV and Nigel Farage on GB News.
