President Donald Trump has said he will proceed with legal action against the BBC after it was revealed that footage of his Jan. 6 speech in Congress had been doctored by the organization.
Asked by Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on “The Ingraham Angle” if he plans to sue, Trump said, “Well, I think I’ll have to.”
“Then why not?” he continued. “Because they’ve deceived the public and they’re admitting it and they’re top class. This is one of our great allies, this is probably one of our great allies. I think the BBC — the government has some of that.”
President Trump said of the edits: “This is a pretty sad event.” “They actually changed my Jan. 6 speech, which was a very beautiful speech, a very calming speech, to make it sound radical. And they actually changed it. What they did was rather unbelievable. They showed me the results later, how they were dismantled as a result of what they had done. And the person in charge resigned, and many others resigned.
The BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, and news director, Deborah Turness, resigned on Sunday, a week after a report by former BBC adviser Michael Prescott detailing a number of editorial errors and miscarriages of justice was leaked to the press. While the top story that emerged was a “Panorama” documentary about Donald Trump that seamlessly stitched together two sentences written 55 minutes apart, the report also raised concerns about coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and transgender issues.
“Well, I think I have an obligation[to sue the BBC]because I can’t allow people to do that,” Trump told Ingraham. “I couldn’t forgive ’60 Minutes.’ You know we settled for millions of dollars. I couldn’t let that happen.”
Trump previously sued Paramount over his own “60 Minutes” case, which accused CBS of deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris. They settled for $16 million.
Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito suggested the president could file a multibillion-dollar lawsuit in Florida unless the BBC offers a “full and fair” retraction and compensates Trump for “the harm caused.”
