US President Donald Trump is expected to take legal action against the BBC, Britain’s public broadcaster, next week, as he announced on Friday, November 14, to reporters, demanding compensation of up to 5 billion dollars.
Donald Trump vs BBC: They have admitted they committed fraud
“We’re going to sue them for somewhere between one and five billion dollars, probably sometime next week. I think I have to do it. They have admitted that they committed fraud,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “They changed the words that came out of my mouth,” he added.
“The people of the United Kingdom are very angry about what happened, as you can imagine, because it shows that the BBC broadcasts fake news,” Trump said, adding that he plans to raise the BBC issue with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has supported the broadcaster’s independence while avoiding taking a stance against Trump. “I’ll call him this weekend. He called me himself. He’s very embarrassed,” Trump stated.
Later, in an interview with British right-wing television channel GB News, Trump said the editing was “impossible to believe” and compared it to election interference. “I made a beautiful statement and they turned it into a not beautiful statement,” he said. “Fake news is a great term, except it’s not strong enough. This is beyond fake, this is corrupt.”
“BBC’s apology is not enough”
Trump said the BBC’s apology was not sufficient. “When you say it’s inadvertent, I guess if it’s inadvertent, you don’t apologize,” he said. “They cut two parts of the speech that are almost an hour apart from each other. It’s incredible that they present the idea that I made this aggressive speech that led to riots. One made me look bad, while the other was a very reassuring statement,” he added.
On Thursday, the BBC sent a letter to the White House apologizing to the American president for the documentary “Trump: A Second Chance?” which aired on the Panorama program in October 2024. However, it emphasizes that there is no legal basis for the Republican US president to pursue civil court action regarding the documentary, which Trump’s lawyers characterized as defamatory.
The BBC announced that its chairman, Samir Shah, sent “a personal letter to the White House, in which he makes clear to President Trump that both he and his organization regret the editing of the president’s speech.” However, it added: “While the BBC sincerely expresses its regret for the way the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree that there is a basis for a defamation lawsuit.”
British Culture Minister Lisa Nandy said it was right for the BBC to apologize to Donald Trump. In the documentary, which was broadcast by the BBC’s “Panorama” news program shortly before the 2024 US presidential election, three segments of Trump’s speech from January 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the Capitol, were spliced together. The editing of the speech created the impression that Trump was inciting his supporters to attack the Capitol.
Trump’s lawyers had threatened the BBC with a lawsuit for compensation of up to one billion dollars if it did not withdraw the documentary, apologize to the US president, and compensate him for financial and moral damage.
On Monday, the BBC apologized for the impression given in a documentary aired last year that Trump had directly encouraged “violent actions” shortly before the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters on January 6, 2021.
