President Trump on Friday said he would sue the BBC for potentially billions after the news outlet misleadingly edited clips from his Jan. 6, 2021, speech ahead of the Capitol insurrection.
“We’ll sue them for anywhere between a billion and $5 billion, probably sometime next week,” the president told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“I think I have to do it. I mean, they’ve even admitted that they cheated,” he added. “They changed the words coming out of my mouth. That’s worse than what CBS did with Kamala. They changed her answer, but at least they didn’t show it coming out of her mouth.”
Last year, a month before the election, BBC aired a documentary that included a clip of the president’s “Stop the Steal” rally speech just an hour before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as the lawmakers prepared to certify the 2020 election win for former President Biden.
The film, splicing two different parts of the president’s comments together, quotes him as saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
In reality, Trump said, “We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down. Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness.”
He continued at the time, “You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.”
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The president added, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
The news corporation issued an apology to the president with a statement noting that an edit of the documentary gave “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action” and said it would not show the 2024 program again. The BBC, however, rejected his request for compensation.
On Friday, the president said he would reach out to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to discuss the issue.
“Many people in the the U.K. are very angry about what happened, as you can imagine, because it shows the BBC is fake news,” he told reporters.
Following the criticism, BBC director-general Tim Davie and BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness resigned from their roles, according to Sky News.
