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”.
However, the BBC has dismissed the defamation claim and refused to pay compensation. The controversy caused a crisis at the BBC and led to the resignations of BBC director-general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness.
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 he planned to call British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the coming days to discuss the spat with the BBC, insisting the prime minister was “deeply embarrassed” by the situation.
If Mr. Trump pursues his lawsuit and wins, it will impose a huge financial burden on the BBC.
The BBC is primarily funded by license fees, so anyone who watches live broadcasts in the UK or accesses BBC content online must pay a compulsory fee. The BBC’s income is further supplemented by commercial subsidiaries.
According to the BBC’s latest operating report, its total income for the year ending March 2025 was £5.9 billion (more than $7.5 billion). License fees collected £3.8 billion (approximately $5 billion), 65% of the BBC’s income that year.
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.
Trump said he wanted the BBC to “compensate him appropriately” for the damage caused to him, but strict limits on defamation lawsuits in the UK mean the president cannot take legal action in the courts of England and Wales because the misconduct occurred more than 12 months ago.
If President Trump wants to make his case, his only option is to do so in a U.S. court. However, this process is not easy. In the United States, the president will be expected to provide high-level and convincing evidence that his reputation has been seriously damaged by the BBC’s edits.
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.
