The moment everyone stopped and Washington united around Donald Trump
As his US tenure ends, RTÉ’s Brian O’Donovan recalls how president was airlifted to hospital
RTÉ’s recently departed Washington correspondent has revealed the chaotic moment that Donald Trump briefly united his detractors and his fans – when the then US president was airlifted from the White House to hospital for treatment for Covid-19.
Brian O’Donovan, whose tenure as RTÉ’s man in the US ended this week when he flew home to Ireland, was uniquely placed to witness how Mr Trump operated during his controversy-filled time in the Oval Office.
But the correspondent’s stand-out reporting memory is President Trump being airlifted to hospital after becoming seriously ill with Covid-19, the virus he had so publicly and dangerously denigrated in the final phase of his presidency.
Describing the chaotic sequence of events – much of it recorded live on air while doing a report for RTÉ’s Nine O’Clock News – Mr O’Donovan told the Irish Mail on Sunday, ‘We were reporting outside the White House, myself and my camera man and… next thing police officers come up to the green area where we were and they were roaring and screaming “clear the area, clear the area”.
‘So I’m doing this live report and this cop is screaming at us and he pushed the camera. It looks bananas and the camera starts pointing in the wrong direction.
‘It was crazy and we didn’t know what was happening. Then the helicopter to take Donald Trump to hospital, because he had gotten so sick, arrives and I remember standing there as the helicopter lifts him up in the air to bring him to hospital and I just thought, “My God, this is a huge moment”.
‘Here’s a man who is in his 70s, who is in the high-risk category, who has developed a very, very serious illness and he is president of the United States.
‘Everyone around stopped. Trump people, anti-Trump people, for that brief moment there was a bit of unity in Washington.
‘Everybody was kind of taken aback and was going, “Wow, love him or hate him, he is a human who is suffering and very sick”.’
The journalist also described to the MoS how Mr Trump would enthral reporters during his press conferences – despite giving little detail on the subject he was speaking about. Mr O’Donovan said: ‘He is a tall man and he commands the presence of the room. He is the big personality in the room and you very much feel that. He is the man in charge. He is entertaining and he can be very funny.
‘He is lacking in the detail and he is not so much into the detail.
He may not know a lot about the topic necessarily but he covers it well by turning to everybody else and saying, “What do you think of it?” and looking for everyone else’s take on things to cover the fact he doesn’t have the detail or the clarity but would never like that to be shown.’
It was a habit Mr O’Donovan noticed when he came across Mr Trump for the first time some years earlier in Co. Clare, when the businessman was promoting his new hotel. He told the MoS: ‘I met him for the first time in Doonbeg in 2014 when I was the finance correspondent for TV3 and it was a wonderful insight and a forecasting as to what he was going to be like as president.
‘When you are covering job announcements as a business reporter it’s always very detailed – “We’re investing X amount and we’re hiring X amount of people”.
‘And then Donald Trump is asked a question, “how much money are you investing?” And he replies, “A tremendous amount of money”. And when he is asked, “How many people are you hiring?” he replies, “Lots and lots of people”.
‘And that’s what he was like when he was president. He would never give a straight answer and he was always very vague and sort of unclear as to what exactly was going on.
‘When I met him in Doonbeg the rumour was that he was going to run for president and a year later, in 2015, he announced he was going to run. Little did I know then that a few years later I would be following him around the White House.’ Mr O’Donovan was appointed RTÉ’s Washington correspondent in 2017. In his recently published book Four Years In The Cauldron, the journalist recalls how he covered three years of the Trump presidency, the Black Lives Matter protests, the unprecedented two presidential impeachments, the storming of the Capitol Building, the Molly Martens murder trial, as well as the tragic death of 21year-old Longford man Danny McGee, who was killed by a friend in a single-blow attack in New York.
With his Stateside adventure over, Mr O’Donovan is looking forward to celebrating his first Christmas at home in five years, as well as tucking into bacon and cabbage dinners, rasher and sausage fry-ups, Taytos and Cadbury chocolate.
His wife Joanna moved back to Ireland with the couple’s two daughters Lucy, 11, and Erin, eight, last month.
And the Cork native is now looking forward to starting the New Year as RTÉ’s work and technology correspondent in February.
He told the MoS that his daughters have picked up a few Americanisms while living across the pond, saying, ‘The girls have the little twangs and have the expressions, so they would be talking about the trash and I’d be saying it’s the rubbish and they’d be talking about the trunk of the car and I’d be saying, “that’s the boot”.
‘The experts say the accent you have in your teenage years is the one that you keep the longest, so we’ll see if the American accent is replaced with a Dublin accent.’
Mr O’Donovan is proud of his stint in the US and his now focused on his new role.
He said: ‘I’m very excited about coming home. I’ve got the dual excitement of wrapping up a really, really, enjoyable, wonderful time in the States and starting a new chapter that is coincidentally happening at Christmas.
‘It’s very, very, exciting to be moving home.’
valerie.hanley@mailonsunday.ie
‘I thought, “my God this is a huge moment”’
‘I’m very excited about coming home’