As Gary O’Donoghue interviewed the Donald Trump supporter who watched a man calmly climb onto the roof of a nearby building and fire a rifle at the former US president, the BBC television reporter could not see his subject.
O’Donoghue, who is blind, could only hear him. And he came to regard that as an advantage upon later being informed that witness Greg Smith cut a bizarre figure to some – clutching a can of beer in his right hand while wearing a red, pro-Trump visor with wild fake hair styled to resemble the Republican presidential nominee’s signature coiffure.
“I wonder, if I could see, whether I would have given him the time of day … because he did look a bit odd,” O’Donoghue said recently. “But I’m glad I did, obviously.”
That’s because Smith delivered to O’Donoghue – while on live television – the earliest account of some of the most alarming aspects of the serious security failure that marked the 13 July assassination attempt targeting Trump at a political rally in rural Pennsylvania.
As Smith relayed it into O’Donoghue’s microphone, he was just outside the rally site but close enough to hear Trump’s speech lobbying for a return to the White House. He described how he and others pointed out to police that a man carrying a rifle had gotten atop a bottling plant with a view to the stage where Trump spoke – but officers did not halt him before he fired about five shots at the former president. Ultimately, Smith said of the shooter, a US Secret Service agent “blew his head off”.
O’Donoghue, who was covering the rally as part of his duties as the BBC’s chief North America political correspondent, said he momentarily feared Smith might be fabricating “something incredibly inflammatory and dangerous and misleading and irresponsible, quite frankly”. But Smith’s account was markedly consistent, and his interview has withstood the test of time.
Multiple videos recorded on cell phones showed rally-goers warning authorities about the gunman, who investigators confirmed killed one spectator, wounded two others and injured Trump’s right ear before a Secret Service counter-sniper shot the attacker to death.
The apparent failures in communication among the Secret Service and different police agencies who were tasked with protecting Trump but failed to stop the shooter from firing are under congressional and FBI investigation. And they prompted the Secret Service’s director to resign.
All of which only reminded O’Donoghue that the condition some in his life have tried to convince him is a disability – given his visually focused profession – can actually be the exact opposite.
“The vision could get in the way, and … the words were the thing that really counted” that day, O’Donoghue said.
While O’Donoghue was already well-known in the UK when a clip of his interview with Smith went viral on social media in the early aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt, many in the US only then got the opportunity to become familiar with the backstory of the reporter who had just played a key role in helping shocked Americans begin to understand how the shooting unfolded.
O’Donoghue, 56, was born in Norfolk in eastern England with partial eyesight, but by age eight he had completely lost his vision. He has recounted how he soon attended boarding schools for people who are blind. But otherwise, there wasn’t much support available during O’Donoghue’s youth for him, his father – a semi-professional soccer player and taxi driver – or mother, a former ballroom dancing teacher.
He doesn’t mince words when he discusses how difficult life could get for his family. As he previously told the Independent, when he was older, O’Donoghue’s mother confided in him that she had contemplated killing them both – something he regarded as a brave admission.
O’Donoghue eventually pursued degrees in philosophy and modern languages before embarking on a career as a reporter at the BBC. He does not recall the outlet initially being eager to hire him – in fact, he said someone there told him “a blind person couldn’t be a reporter” before he landed a job at the prestigious broadcaster.
“And I … never accepted that,” said O’Donoghue, who was 21 at the time he was told his disability would prevent him from being a journalist. “That’s why I pursued my career,” rising from a junior reporter on BBC Radio 4’s Today show to the chief North America political correspondent post for the outlet’s television news network by 2015.
Having moved with his wife, Sarah Lewthwaite, and their daughter, Lucy, to the US, O’Donoghue has since covered six of the nation’s highest-profile deadly mass shootings – none of which have led to the substantial gun control many in the country would like to see. He reported on Trump’s successful run to the White House in 2016, Trump’s defeat to Joe Biden during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and he is covering the the 2024 race between Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris – a contest many believe could decide the future of American democracy.
As he told it to the Telegraph newspaper, O’Donoghue fights hard to accomplish his responsibilities while simultaneously trying to escape stereotypes associated with being blind. He doesn’t drive – but he did learn how, at a defunct air base while studying at one of his boarding schools. He doesn’t use a guide dog, suspecting one would be “more of an encumbrance”.
His producer colleagues sometimes help him get around – otherwise, he walks using a long white cane. He has joked that one perk of being a blind journalist is that it seems harder for people who don’t want to talk to him to shut doors in his face than it would be for them to do the same to his counterparts who can see.
Journalism students who are blind often respond to his work by contacting him. The parents of children who are blind occasionally stop him in the street – especially when he is in the UK but increasingly in the US, too. All tell him that seeing him thrive makes them dream that they or their children “will be able to have a fulfilling career”, O’Donoghue said.
O’Donoghue said he never tells those people it is easy “because it’s not”. For instance, as he once discussed with the Independent, a producer once took one of his stories from him and gave it to another correspondent to present on air, prompting him to successfully press a discrimination complaint.
Nonetheless, hearing from those journalism students and parents makes him proud, he said, noting that he does not see many – if any – people who are blind or in wheelchairs reporting or presenting on cable news. He also said he knows of only two journalists who are blind working at newspapers in the US, which O’Donoghue did compliment for its 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, legislation that was meant to protect the civil rights of people who are disabled.
O’Donoghue said he has struggled to overcome the emotions that coursed through his body when the Trump rally shooting erupted, forcing him to dive to the ground for cover while clad in a business suit.
Chiefly, O’Donoghue said, he felt sadness at how painful it can be to report on the US when politics and violence intersect.
Yet he quickly regained his footing, reached his hand out, ended up touching Smith as he passed by and nailed down perhaps the day’s most important interview.
O’Donoghue said he hoped the grace he demonstrated in front of a global audience – under literal fire – leads more of the public to realize “that the barriers … often put in the way of disabled people do not need to be there”.
“They’re constructed by the world,” O’Donoghue said. “They are not inherent to being blind or disabled, and … these great things can be done.”