BBC News’ chief North America correspondent, Gary O’Donoghue, has revealed that he mistakenly hung up on President Donald Trump just moments before conducting the network’s first exclusive interview with a sitting U.S. president in nearly a decade.
O’Donoghue, a veteran journalist who is blind, had been granted the rare opportunity to speak with President Trump to mark the one-year anniversary of the assassination attempt during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The journalist had covered the dramatic incident live and was widely praised for his reporting — including by Trump himself, who complimented the BBC’s fairness and said it was a “great honor” to speak with O’Donoghue.
But the landmark interview nearly didn’t happen.
O’Donoghue recalled being asleep at home when his phone rang unexpectedly late in the evening. “The phone woke me up and one of his top aides said, ‘Hi Gary, the president’s on the line for you now,’” he said. “I had to run into the living room, grab a digital recorder and do what I could.”
In the rush, however, he accidentally disconnected the call.
“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,” he admitted with a laugh. “Anyway, they rang back.”
Fortunately, the White House called again, and O’Donoghue was able to quickly collect himself and begin the interview. “I pressed ‘go’ on a little recorder of mine — I prayed that I had pressed ‘go,’ and thank goodness I had. We were told we’d have five minutes, we ended up with 20.”
The resulting conversation caught Trump in an unusually reflective mood. He spoke about the moment of the shooting, recalling the eerie silence afterward and how he refused to be taken away on a stretcher. “I like to think about it as little as possible,” he said.
When asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump responded bluntly: “I trust almost no one.” He added, “We’ll have a great conversation. I’ll say, ‘That’s good, I think we’re close to getting it done,’ and then he’ll knock down a building in Kyiv.”
The president also expressed warm words for newly elected UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “I really like the prime minister a lot, even though he is a liberal,” Trump remarked. As for his upcoming state visit to the UK in September, he said his goals were simple: “Have a good time and respect King Charles, because he’s a great gentleman.”
The interview was the first exclusive BBC sit-down with a sitting U.S. president since Barack Obama’s 2015 appearance with Jon Sopel. Although Trump has previously engaged with UK media, his interviews have typically been with personal allies like Piers Morgan and Nigel Farage.
For O’Donoghue, the experience was a career-defining moment — even if it began with a moment of panic and an unintended hang-up on the president himself.