The President of the United States, Donald Trump, stated that he intends to sue the BBC next week, for an amount that could reach 5 billion dollars.
“We’re going to sue them for between $1 billion and $5 billion, probably next week,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One, according to Reuters. “I have to. They admitted they manipulated the video. They changed the words that came out of my mouth.”
The controversy arose after the “Daily Telegraph” released a report from an external consultant that pointed out several flaws at the BBC, including the editing of a documentary that brought together separate excerpts from Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021.
One part showed Trump telling supporters he would walk with them to the Capitol; in another, the expression “fight tooth and nail” appeared. However, the edition omitted a sentence in which the president called for voices to be heard “in a peaceful and patriotic way”.
Faced with criticism, the BBC apologized on Thursday, acknowledging that the montage “unintentionally created the impression” of a single continuous excerpt and may have conveyed the wrong idea that Trump had directly incited violence.
The station also committed to not broadcasting the Panorama program documentary again, although it completely rejects that there are grounds for a defamation lawsuit or any claim for compensation.
The president of the BBC, Samir Shah, also sent an apology to the White House and classified the episode as “an error of judgement”. British Culture Minister Lisa Nandy considered the gesture “correct and necessary”.
Trump will speak to the British Prime Minister
Trump’s lawyers had given the BBC until this Friday to withdraw the documentary, otherwise they would face a lawsuit worth at least one billion dollars. They also demanded an apology and compensation for the alleged “enormous reputational and financial damage”according to a letter seen by Reuters.
Aboard Air Force One, the American President added that he has not yet spoken to the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, with whom he says he has a good relationship, but that he intends to do so over the weekend. According to Trump, Starmer tried to contact him and is “very embarrassed” by the incident.
Em interview with GB News channelTrump stated that the edition “is impossible to believe”. “I made a nice statement and they turned it into a not-so-nice statement,” he said. “Fake news was a great term, but it’s no longer enough. This goes beyond fake, this is corruption.”