US President Donald Trump has confirmed he will sue the BBC over its edit of his 6 January 2021 speech, the broadcaster reported, noting that the legal action follows its apology and refusal to compensate him.
“We’ll sue them for anywhere between $1bn and $5bn, probably sometime next week,” Mr Trump said, according to the BBC, which reported that he made the comments while speaking to reporters on board Air Force One last Friday evening.
At today’s exchange rates, $5bn converts to approximately shs17.8tn–18.3tn. That figure equals about 25% of Uganda’s recently approved shs72.38 trillion national budget for the 2025/26 financial year.
On Thursday, the BBC said the edit of the speech in the investigative programme Panorama had unintentionally given “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action”.
It said it would not broadcast it 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.”
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The editing scandal burst into the headlines when the Telegraph, one of the UK’s main dailies, reported that the BBC had doctored Mr Trump’s speech by making him appear to encourage the Capitol Hill riot.
The paper cited an internal whistleblowing memo written by Michael Prescott, who had served as an external advisor to the broadcaster’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC) before leaving the role in June.
Two top executives of the BBC — director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness — have since resigned.
The Panorama programme was broadcast a week before the US election.
It “completely misled” viewers by showing the president telling supporters he was going to walk to the Capitol with them to “fight like hell”, when in fact he said he would walk with them “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”, reported the Telegraph.
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The BBC reported that Mr Trump said he had not raised the impending legal action with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer but that the premier had asked to speak to him. Trump said he would call Mr Starmer over the weekend.
A search of public court record databases confirmed that no lawsuit had been filed in federal or state court in Florida as of Friday evening, according to the BBC.
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