by Misty Severi
President Donald Trump made good on his threat to sue the BBC on Monday for $5 billion, despite the network apologizing for airing a program last year that edited clips from his speech on January 6, 2021, to indicate he was calling for violence.
Trump’s attorneys threatened to sue the network for $1 billion last month over its broadcast of the Panorama episode if it did not issue a retraction, apologize and compensate him for the misleading edits.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Florida, argued the BBC “maliciously” tied two comments together that Trump made more than 54 minutes apart in order to give the impression that he’d urged his supporters to engage in violence.
“It would have been impossible for BBC’s journalists and producers to splice together two distinct parts of the Speech from nearly 55 minutes apart unless they were acting intentionally,” the suit claimed. “Such a dramatic distortion could never have occurred by accident.”
The segment edited Trump’s declaration at the White House that he and his supporters were “going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” and his statement nearly an hour later that Republicans “fight like hell.”
The clip instead combined the comments to have the president state: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The British news corporation has apologized for the editing, acknowledging that it failed to live up to the company’s standards by giving a false impression and promised to never show the segment again, but declined to say it was defamatory.
The lawsuit is the latest legal action Trump and his administration have taken against news organizations. He has already reached settlements with CBS News and ABC News for alleged deceptive editing, and has cases pending against the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Before Trump took office, ABC News agreed to pay Trump $16 million in December 2024. Trump sued the news outlet for defamation after George Stephanopoulos said Trump had been found liable for the rape of E. Jean Carroll. Trump was found liable for sexual assault of Carroll.
Trump sued CBS News after 60 Minutes selectively edited an interview it conducted with former Vice President Kamala Harris. In July, the outlet agreed to pay $15 million to the president.
In September, Trump sued The New York Times for defamation over the newspaper’s coverage of him ahead of the 2024 election.
“I view it as the single largest illegal Campaign contribution, EVER. Their Endorsement of Kamala Harris was actually put dead center on the front page of The New York Times, something heretofore UNHEARD OF!” he said on Truth Social.
– – –
Misty Severi is a reporter for Just the News. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
Photo “Donald Trump” by The White House. Background Photo “BBC Building” by Alexander Svensson. CC BY 2.0.
.jpg){kind=link}