President Donald Trump may have pressured top executives the state broadcaster of the United Kingdom into resigning, but he’s not stopping there.
In remarks made late Friday aboard Air Force One, Trump said he is going to be pursuing a defamation action against the BBC for a deceptively edited clip of the comments he made during a speech before the Capitol incursion on Jan. 6, 2021.
The comments, aired on a BBC news program just before the 2024 U.S. election, were edited to make it seem that Trump called for violence at the Capitol.
BBC director-general Tim Davie and BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness have already resigned as part of the scandal, as the U.K. news outlet Sky News noted.
“We’ll sue them. We’ll sue them for anywhere between a billion and five billion dollars, probably sometime next week,” Trump said, according to Reuters.
“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.”
Trump said U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has requested to speak to Trump about the scandal, and Trump indicated he’d call Starmer this weekend, according to the BBC.
“The people of the U.K. are very angry about what happened… because it shows the BBC is fake news,” Trump said, according to the news outlet.
🚨 BREAKING: President Trump CONFIRMS he’ll be suing BBC for between $1 billion and $5 billion as soon as next week
This is after it was revealed the British outlet intentionally edited his J6 speech to make it sound like he was inciting vioIence
BANKRUPT this foreign rag, 47! pic.twitter.com/fuCe2vbbOA
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) November 15, 2025
The scandal began revolves around a deceptively edited clip that aired during an episode of BBC’s “Panorama” in October of 2024.
The clip in question was from Trump’s speech preceding the Capitol incursion. In spite of the fact that he called for peaceful protest, the BBC edited together two bits of the piece 50 minutes apart to make it appear he didn’t.
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” Trump said during one part of the speech.
Over 50 minutes later, he said, “And we fight. We fight like hell.”
Should Trump sue the BBC?
The “Panorama” clip, as per the BBC: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The clip begat a wider scandal that included the network’s biased coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, including a hagiographical documentary of a 13-year-old boy that failed to disclose the child was the son of Hamas’ deputy minister of agriculture.
In October, the BBC itself reported that the British broadcasting authority Ofcom found that the documentary was “materially misleading.”
Despite an apology and the firings, the BBC has refused to discuss any sort of financial settlement with Trump.
“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,” the BBC said in a statement on Thursday.
“BBC chair Samir Shah has separately sent a personal letter 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 program.
“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.”
Trump said that the lack of a financial settlement over the defamatory edit led to his decision to decide to seek legal action.
“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters, according to Reuters. “They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”
In its report about Trump’s comments, the BBC noted that the network laid out five defenses to a potential defamation claim in its letter to Trump.
First, it said, the BBC did not have rights to the program in the U.S. and didn’t make it available to viewers there. Secondly, because Trump was elected, it claimed there was no harm.
Third, it said the changes were designed to shorten the speech, not to mislead, meaning no malice was involved. Fourth, the clip was part of an hour-long program. Fifth, it said, it was a matter of public concern where the speech was constitutionally protected.
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