BBC Essex journalist Richard Smith reported live from the runway as Trump landed for his state visit in June 2019.<\/p>\n
He said: “The leader of the free world arriving in your patch is a big deal – and my job was to bring that alive for radio listeners in June 2019.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump’s flight into Stansted had only been confirmed just days before, so I had to try and steep myself in facts as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
As a radio reporter, I knew there would potentially be a need to fill time, to find ways of keeping going throughout the arrival process.<\/p>\n
The risk with live coverage is sometimes very little – or nothing – can happen.<\/p>\n
I was placed at the front of a fenced-off area holding about 50 photographers and journalists from the world’s media, all there to see the doors open and the president and first lady walk out.<\/p>\n
There was a man with a trundle wheel measuring out exactly to the inch where Air Force One should park in front of the waiting reporters.<\/p>\n
One of the TV reporters was searching for a hair band to deal with the high winds next to the runway. The gusts were particularly bad for telly hair.<\/p>\n
It took Trump 15 minutes to exit the plane after touchdown, which felt like an eternity at the time.<\/p>\n
I managed to keep talking live on air for that whole 15 minutes. I think I must have been running off pure adrenaline.<\/p>\n
Trump walked down the stairs, boarded a military helicopter and headed straight to London.<\/p>\n
And just like that, the president of the United States of America had come and gone.<\/p>\n
You only expect one presidential state visit, and so I felt the hand of history on my shoulder that day.<\/p>\n
There was undoubtedly pressure to get everything spot on and to put on a good show for our listeners.<\/p>\n
The smell of fuel was also really strong: clearly, presidential jet fuel is the best.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BBC Essex journalist Richard Smith reported live from the runway as Trump landed for his state visit in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-437861","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115235082889626803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}