US President Donald Trump says he intends to sue the BBC for $1 billion to $5 billion “probably in the next week” despite the BBC’s apology over a documentary that Trump’s lawyers called defamatory.
“I think we have to do that,” President Trump told reporters. “They even admit that they cheated… They cheated and changed the words that came out of my mouth.”
On Thursday, the BBC apologized to President Trump for editing errors in an October 2024 documentary called “Trump: A Second Chance?”, saying it “deeply regrets the way the video clip was edited”.
In an interview with British network GB News, President Trump acknowledged the apology he received from the BBC, saying, “They wrote me a great letter.”
“They say, ‘I apologize,’ but if they say it wasn’t intentional, I think they wouldn’t apologize if it wasn’t intentional,” he added.
The president told GB News he had no intention of filing a lawsuit, but said the step was essential to prevent similar incidents in the future.
“This was so bad,” he said, “that if you don’t do it, you can’t prevent it from happening again with other people…I want to know why they did that.”
A BBC edit of the TV program Panorama spliced together various parts of President Trump’s speech on the day of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, giving the impression that Trump told the audience he would walk with him to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”
He told GB News: “I made a beautiful statement and they made it into an un-beautiful statement.”
The president said on Friday that he planned to call British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the coming days to discuss the spat with the BBC.
He admitted he had not yet spoken to Mr Starmer about the scandal, but insisted the Prime Minister was “deeply embarrassed” by the situation.
President Trump had previously threatened to sue the BBC for $1 billion if it did not withdraw the documentary and apologize for what its lawyers described as “overwhelming financial and reputational damage” by a Friday deadline of 5pm ET.
President Trump previously told the BBC he wanted to be “appropriately compensated” for the damage caused.
The broadcaster rebuked President Trump’s demand for compensation, saying: “While the BBC deeply regrets the way the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree that the defamation claim has merit.”
A letter from the BBC’s lawyers outlines the group’s basis for rejecting Trump’s defamation claim, including that the documentary was not distributed in the United States, that the editing was done to “shorten a long speech” rather than to mislead viewers, and that the 12-second clip was never intended to be considered in isolation.
The letter also claims that the documentary did not cause any harm to Trump, as he was re-elected as US president shortly after the footage was aired in the UK.
CNN’s Billy Stockwell and Laura Sherman contributed to this report.
