Trump has said he would raise the issue with Starmer – how the PM responds will be critical and significant
As Donald Trump flew to his Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida for the weekend, he made it clear to reporters travelling with him that the BBC’s letter of apology for Panorama’s clumsy editing of his January 6th 2021 speech had not worked.
Not only had the note from BBC Chair Samir Shah failed to mollify the US leader, it appears only to have hardened his resolve to pursue legal action against the corporation.
The price Trump is now demanding to settle his claim that the BBC in some fashion defamed him, may rise as high as $5 billion, up from the $1 billion he previously threatened.
“We’ll sue them for anywhere between a billion and five billion”, the president said, adding that legal paperwork will be filed “probably sometime next week”. But Trump indicated he plans to discuss the crisis with Sir Keir Starmer over the weekend, giving the Prime Minister a possible opening to back the BBC and save it from the extensive costs involved in defending any legal action.
At the very moment Trump was heading to Florida, GB News – no longer a bit player in Washington – was struggling to get a White House conversation they had recorded with the president on Friday afternoon onto the air. By the time unspecified technical issues were resolved and the interaction was finally being screened, Trump had already scooped them, his comments at 35,000 feet being reported by the BBC itself.
(Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
In his response to entirely sympathetic, softball questions posed by Washington-based GB News presenter Bev Turner, Trump described the BBC’s edit of his speech as “worse than the Kamala thing”, a reference to his successful receipt of $16m from CBS News’ parent company Paramount to settle a dispute over the video editing of a pre-election interview with his foe in last year’s election. (Paramount, at the time, was seeking White House approval for its multi-billion dollar merger with Skydance, and infuriated CBS News personnel by settling a lawsuit considered eminently defensible by most legal experts).
Trump told Turner he now believes the BBC’s conduct was “beyond fake. This is corrupt, what they did”. He scoffed at any suggestion that Panorama’s error was unintentional, and even appeared to infer that the corporation had literally put words into his mouth.
“It looks like its actually the same mouth movement…but it’s a totally different meaning and totally different words”, he said. “You know you worry about AI because things like this can happen…but you can‘t imagine that the BBC did this somewhat crudely”, he said, having earlier claimed the BBC’s edit was “an amazing job”.
Trump demonstrated zero understanding of the BBC’s governance, telling Turner “I don’t even know if the BBC is owned by, erm, what percentage is owned, or if any is owned by your government. I don’t know”. Starmer can perhaps set him straight and explain that there is no direct government funding involved in the BBC’s domestic operations. (Earlier in the week, Trump told Fox News polemicist Laura Ingraham that “the government has a chunk” of the BBC, a false statement that she entirely failed to correct).
At this point it is hard to evince whether Trump truly intends to follow through with his lawsuit. He threatens to bring legal actions against perceived enemies all the time, but often his bark turns out to be worse than his bite. He told Turner “I’m not looking to get into lawsuits. But I think I have an obligation to do it. This was so egregious. If you don’t do it, you don’t stop it from happening again to other people”.
But few American lawyers think a legal case brought against the BBC in Florida stands very much chance of success. America’s blanket freedom of speech protections enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution will cover any transmission of the Panorama documentary in the United States. And the President has already run into trouble demanding $15bn from the New York Times in the sunshine state.
Your next read
A lawsuit claiming the newspaper had defamed him by suggesting he was not as successful in the world of business as he claims, was thrown out by a Republican-appointed judge last month. Dismissing the president’s complaint, Judge Steven Mayberry described it as “tedious and burdensome” as well as “vituperation and invective”. Trump has now re-filed a complaint that the newspaper says “has no merit…this is merely an attempt to stifle independent reporting and generate PR attention”.
Elsewhere in his chat with Turner, Trump launched a fresh attack on Sir Sadiq Khan, describing the Mayor of London as “terrible, terrible” and repeating his false claim that sharia law is governing parts of the city. He laid into European governments, including Britain, for failing to do more to combat immigration.
Now the BBC ball is in Starmer’s court. Their conversation could be complex, given that Trump will almost certainly want to see right-wingers replacing Tim Davie and Deborah Turness as Director General and CEO of News respectively. But at least there is the slimmest of openings for the Prime Minister to try and persuade Trump to back down, saving TV licence-fee payers a fortune in the process.
