Trump signals he will move ahead with BBC lawsuit of up to $5 billion despite apology

President Donald Trump on Friday night signaled that his legal team intends to move forward with a defamation lawsuit against the BBC, despite its recent apology for editing clips from a speech in a way that appeared to indicate he was calling for violence.

Trump's attorneys first threatened to sue the network for $1 billion on Sunday over its broadcast of a Panorama episode that aired last year if it did not issue a retraction, apologize and compensate him for the misleading edits.

The BBC apologized to the president Thursday for the misleading edits, acknowledging that it failed to live up to the company's standards by giving a false impression. But it did not agree to compensate him.

“We’ll sue them for anywhere between a billion and $5 billion, probably sometime next week,” the president told reporters on Air Force One.  “I think I have to do it. I mean, they’ve even admitted that they cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth. 

"That’s worse than what CBS did with Kamala [Harris]," Trump said in reference to the former vice president's interview with "60 Minutes." "They changed her answer, but at least they didn’t show it coming out of her mouth.”

The BBC segment edited Trump's declaration at the White House on January 6, 2021, that he and his supporters were "going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women," and his statement nearly an hour later that Republicans "fight like hell." 

The clip instead combined the comments to have the president state: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol... and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."

Criticism of the program also prompted BBC director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness to resign.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.