U.S. President Donald J. Trump said that he will seek up to $5 billion in damages from the BBC in his planned lawsuit over the British public broadcaster’s misleading edits of his speech on January 6th.
Speaking to reporters on Friday evening aboard Air Force One, President Trump said per ITV: “We’ll sue them from $1 billion to $5 billion, probably sometime next week.”
“We have to do it, they’ve even admitted that they cheated. Not that they couldn’t have not done that. They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth,” he added.
Earlier this month, an internal BBC memo leaked by a former ethics advisor revealed that a Panorama documentary produced by the British state broadcaster had “materially misled” viewers ahead of last year’s presidential election by splicing two sections of President Trump’s speech on January 6th 2021 to make it appear as if he had called on his supporters to “fight” at the Capitol.
The memo further stated that BBC bosses ignored concerns over the “doctored” footage and had allowed the film to remain on the broadcaster’s streaming service for a year. In the wake of the memo’s release, BBC Director General Tim Davie and the CEO of News, Deborah Turness, resigned earlier this week.
On Friday, the BBC issued a formal apology to the U.S. President and admitted that the spliced edits in the Panorama documentary gave “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”. The broadcaster further said that it would not air the programme again. However, despite admitting fault, the BBC said that it does not plan to pay any damages in compensation to Trump.
The state broadcaster argued that the documentary did not harm Trump, given that he won the 2024 election after it was aired, that the documentary was not broadcast in the United States, and that other pro-Trump voices were featured in the film. The BBC also claimed that the misleading edits were not malicious, but rather were made due to time constraints.
In an interview with GB News on Friday, President Trump said that he felt an “obligation” to launch legal action against the BBC, saying: “This was so egregious. If you don’t do it, you don’t stop it from happening again with other people. I’d like to find out why they did it.”
“You know, the word fake is one thing but this is beyond fake. This is corrupt what they did,” he added.
The president said that he has not discussed the matter with British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
However, Trump has received the backing of former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss. Speaking to Fox News, Truss said that “lots of people in Britain are cheering Trump on and who want him to sue the BBC because they are a huge problem.”
“They’ve lied, they’ve cheated, they’ve fiddled with footage. Both in the case of President Trump but also covering up what’s happening in Britain, whether it be mass migration, whether it’s our economic problems.”
“They are always biased towards the left, and the British taxpayer has had to pay for all of this fake news,” Truss said, adding that she believes the BBC should be defunded and “put out of its misery”.
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