US President Donald Trump has said he will move ahead with legal action against the BBC even though the British public broadcaster has apologised for the way his speech was edited in a documentary aired last year.
"We'll sue them. We'll sue them for anywhere between a billion and 5 billion dollars, probably sometime next week," Trump told reporters on Air Force One overnight on Saturday.
"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 said.
What is the Trump-BBC controversy?
The dispute comes after a turbulent period for the British Broadcasting Corporation, which has already seen senior resignations and an apology for an “error of judgment” from its Indian origin chair, Samir Shah.
On Thursday, the BBC said the edited section of Trump's January 6, 2021 speech had unintentionally created "the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action" and confirmed it would not air the footage again. The broadcaster has apologised to Trump but has ruled out any financial compensation.
Trump had earlier threatened to sue the BBC for 1 billion dollars in damages unless it issued a retraction, apology and compensation. He has now said he will proceed with the lawsuit despite the apology.
Trump says obligation to sue BBC
In an interview with GB News in the UK, Trump said he was not seeking legal battles but felt he had an “obligation to do it”. "This was so egregious. If you don't do it, you don't stop it from happening again with other people," he said.
The Panorama documentary at the centre of the controversy was aired in October 2024 and included references to Trump’s 2021 speech in Washington DC, when he told supporters: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women."
More than fifty minutes later in the same address, he added: "And we fight. We fight like hell."
However, the programme showed him saying: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol. . . and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell." The backlash over the edited sequence has led to the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness.
"We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action," a BBC statement stated.
A spokesperson for the broadcaster said its lawyers had responded to Trump’s legal team and that BBC chair Samir Shah had separately written to the White House “making clear to President Trump that he and the corporation are sorry for the edit of the president's speech on 6 January 2021, which featured in the programme".
"While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim," the spokesperson said.
With inputs from AP
