Trump confirms plan to sue BBC despite apology for Panorama edit

Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One, Trump said: "We'll sue them for anywhere between $1bn and $5bn."

Trump’s comments came the day after the BBC apologised to the US President for a Panorama episode that spliced parts of his 6 January 2021 speech together.

The corporation said the edit had given "the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action" and said it would not show the 2024 programme again.

"I think I have to do it," Trump told reporters of his plan to take legal action. "They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth."

The controversy stems from the way Trump's 6 January 2021 speech was edited by Panorama for a documentary that aired in 2024. In his speech, he told supporters: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women."

More than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: "And we fight. We fight like hell."

In the Panorama programme, the clip shows 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."

The controversy over the edit led to the resignations of BBC director general Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness.

In its Corrections and Clarifications section, published last week, the BBC said: “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 would like to apologise to President Trump for that error of judgment.”

The BBC recently formally responded to President Trump’s legal team, saying that while the corporation "sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited", it "strongly disagree[s] there is a basis for a defamation claim.” Discover more here.