President Donald Trump is trying to take his war on the media across the pond, but the United Kingdom isn’t having it.
Trump’s attorney threatened a $1 billion lawsuit on the British Broadcasting Corporation Tuesday over a doctored clip of Trump speaking to his beloved Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
If the outlet doesn’t comply with their demands—including issuing an apology and paying Trump an “appropriate” amount of money—it will be added to a growing list of outlets embroiled in legal trouble with Trump.
President Donald Trump
Earlier this month, a leaked memo from BBC employee Michael Prescott claimed that a 2024 clip tarnished Trump’s character by changing what he said outside of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, implying that he incited the violent insurrection.
“We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell,” Trump said in the clip.
But Trump really said, “We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women."
BBC Chair Samir Shah said in a publicly shared letter that “the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”
However, he said that the purpose of the spliced video was to “convey the message of the speech” so viewers could “understand how it had been received by President Trump's supporters and what was happening on the ground at that time.”
He also apologized for the BBC’s “error of judgement.”
First off, Trump’s legal attack on the BBC doesn’t hold much ground since the documentary was aired in 2024, passing the one-year deadline to file, and it didn’t appear to even make it to U.S. markets.
“Our journalists are hardworking people who strive for impartiality, and I will stand by their journalism,” CEO Deborah Turness, who resigned alongside Director General Tim Davie, said Monday. “There is no institutional bias. Mistakes are made, but there’s no institutional bias.”
But Trump has been on a war path targeting media outlets—and in some aspects, he’s won.
Trump successfully sued Paramount over an edited “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. He’s also claimed $15 million from ABC over a 2024 defamation lawsuit. Overall, he has claimed more than $90 million in legal cases brought against the media.
While the shift of mainstream media is more nuanced than just avoiding punitive action, billionaires in media will always be watching their bottom line. And Trump clearly isn’t shy about threatening money to shut them up.
Now that Trump's attack on the media has gone international, the future of free press isn’t looking good.
