The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
FRONT SEAT TO HISTORY
NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell, a Northeast native, has covered a few presidents, but none like Trump
“It’s been an unrelenting roller coaster ride for six years.” ¶ That’s how Northeast Ohio native and NBC News White House Correspondent Kelly O’Donnell describes covering Donald J. Trump from January 2015, when he was an outspoken Republican candidate for president of the United States, to these, the commander-in-chief’s final stormy days in office. ¶ “It has been newsy, eventful, filled with surprises, unpredictable all the way through,” she says during a recent phone interview from her home in the Washington, D.C. area. “And it has been a time when you could never really exhale.”
O’Donnell grew up east of Cleveland, in Euclid and University Heights. Maybe her family could have predicted a career in broadcast news when, as a very young girl, she was interested in current events and conducted pretend interviews of family members and neighbors, using a hairbrush for a microphone.
She did morning announcements in grade school, she says, and worked on the yearbook at Villa Angela Academy in Cleveland. (The all-girls Catholic school, which has since merged with all-boys St. Joseph High School to become Villa Angela-St. Joseph High School, didn’t have a newspaper, she says.)
“I feel in many ways very lucky I didn’t wrestle with, ‘What do I want to do with my life?’ I always sort of knew.”
The graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, would land at Cleveland’s then-CBS station, WJW-TV 8, in 1987. Also a weekend and fill-in anchor, O’Donnell’s work as a reporter included talking to presidential candidates and their wives when they visited Northeast Ohio. She says an experience covering then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton when he came to Parma in 1992 to get pierogies helped teach her to be ready with a question when she got the opportunity to ask one.
“I also learned that candidates at that level take it very seriously — their encounters with local news reporters — because they recognize that many voters will get their news from local news outlets,” she says.
While her years with Channel 8 helped prepare her for her jump to the national-news stage, there nonetheless was an enormous learning curve at NBC, where, over the years, she also has covered presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. She will continue in her current position after Democrat Joseph R. Biden is inaugurated as the 46th U.S. president on Jan. 20 in Washington.
“(Media members) are all talking amongst ourselves about how the rhythm of the Biden administration is surely going to be different,” O’Donnell says. “And each presidency is different.”
She allows she doesn’t expect the same kind of “direct-thoughts-of-a-president,” sometimes earth shifting tweets from Biden that Trump — before being banned from the social-media platform in recent days — was known for sending at all hours.
“If there is a bit more work-life balance in the next four years,” she says, “that’s not such a bad thing.”
It could be rough covering Trump, known for lashing out at reporters — O’Donnell included — who ask him a question he doesn’t like. Plus, she’s no stranger to be accused of dealing in “fake news” by some of his supporters.
“And I take great offense at that,” she says. “I think it is a term that has been very harmful and one that I hope will diminish going forward.”
As for dealing with Trump publicly, it often was adversarial, she says.
“I have always tried to be respectful — and sometimes overtly respectful, by (saying) ‘Respectfully, Mr. President ... ‘ to show that I respect the office and I respect what it takes to win the office. If a president wants to give me grief, I can take that — that’s not a big deal.
“It is disappointing that there has been so much that has painted the media in an unflattering light. And I’m not here to defend all media, either. But I know how I do my job, and I know how my colleagues on our White House team work together and our effort to be fair and thorough and honest in what we do.”
To be fair, she has experienced another side of Trump, a gentler side.
“I think that one of the difficult things for people to understand is you can watch the president be very hostile toward the press in one moment, and then in another moment you might see him in the hallway or you might see him in an event, and he would say, ‘How are you? Is everything OK?’ And it would be as if he were genuinely asking about your well-being.”
Trump has not behaved much like a typical outgoing president since his defeat on Election Day in November, of course, making numerous contested claims the election was stolen from him — a fight that continued until Jan. 6, the day Congress eventually ratified the Electoral College votes.
O’Donnell covered the rally the president held that day at The Ellipse in Washington, several blocks from the Capitol. Having started what she knew would be a “very long, cold day” at 5:30 a.m., she saw not too much out of the ordinary from other Trump rallies she’s covered. Yes, there were people who looked as if they could cause trouble, but there were also folks who brought their children and dogs. She did, however, note that many speakers, Trump included, used the word “fight” in their addresses.
The House of Representatives recently impeached Trump for a second time, this time for “incitement of insurrection” after encouraging supporters to walk down to the Capitol, where a siege of the building soon took place and members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence had to be moved to a safe location.
“It was just so stunning to watch what unfolded,” O’Donnell says. “I spent a number of years working at the Capitol covering Congress, and so I knew the inside, outside of that building very well and how extraordinary it was for people to be able to get through some of the places where they were breaching the building.
“It was sad and shocking to watch.”
On an appearance during NBC News’ coverage that afternoon, after walking a few blocks with these passionate supporters of Trump, O’Donnell noted hearing many of them say that the president was among them, which she knew was not true, as he’d gone immediately to the White House after the rally. While he told the crowd he was going to be there — and O’Donnell allows he may actually have wanted to be there and that perhaps could not be for security reasons — he knew he wasn’t going to be. To her, it illustrated how close his supporters feel to him.
“It was an extraordinary day,” she says. “I suppose we always knew the Trump era would end in some way that was outside the normal, that was going to make a big impact. I just couldn’t have imagined that.”
Due to the risk of the spread of COVID-19 and heightened security around the Biden inauguration — because of all the road closures in the district, O’Donnell says she will be staying at a hotel not far from the event in the days leading up to it — it will be unique.
“I’ve done several inaugurals, and they are always special, and they are always bigger than the individual who is putting his hand on the Bible and, in this case, her hand,” she says, referring to Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris.
Along with NBC’s coverage, you may see O’Donnell on sister cable network MSNBC and digital arm NBC News Now, aimed largely at cord cutters.
“I think our coverage will be, certainly, comprehensive and will take people inside the experience, which is one of the things that I think is great, especially when the public is being asked not to attend. I think being able to watch our coverage will give people a sense of being there — and being able to witness what is a very important moment for our country.”
O’Donnell still has family, including her father, living in Northeast Ohio and comes back home to visit when she can. From afar, she keeps tabs on the Browns and other things going on here.
She appreciates where her career has taken her.
“I’ve always had a real sense of what a privilege it is to cover the White House and be able to go through those gates and to witness those great moments of history that happen in our time. And I’m so very joyful about what I think is really an extraordinary job to have, and I feel very lucky to have it.”