from the thin-skinned-bullies dept

Wed, Nov 19th 2025 05:22am - Karl Bode

Last week we noted how the BBC has been tripping over itself to apologize to Donald Trump for some edits made to a BBC documentary. Admittedly the edits weren’t the best idea; they effectively cobbled together two different parts of Trump’s January 6 speech 54 minutes apart not to misrepresent, but to make it more clear that Trump actively encouraged an open, violent insurrection that resulted in fatalities.

Obviously our mad, idiot king didn’t much like that.

Despite multiple resignations and numerous CEO apologies (and a promise to never air the documentary again), Trump insists he’s going to sue the BBC anyway, for between $1 and $5 billion:

“US President Donald Trump says he intends to sue the BBC for between $1 billion and $5 billion “probably sometime next week” despite the broadcaster’s apology to him over a documentary Trump’s lawyers described as defamatory.

“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters. “They’ve even admitted that they cheated … They cheated, they changed the words coming out of my mouth.”

Again, the edits didn’t entirely “change the words coming out of Trump’s mouth,” because he actively did vocally support a violent insurrection against the government. They did however cobble together two different parts of a speech to make it sound like they were said all at once, something the documentary editors should have known better than to do given king dingus’ litigious nature.

Granted Trump may not have as much fun in British courts, where Justices and Judges are likely to be less receptive to Donald’s incoherence. UK defamation laws are also an entirely different affair, with Trump being particularly challenged by the fact the BBC edits occurred more than twelve months ago, and defamation action in UK courts must occur within twelve months of the alleged offense.

Last week we noted how the BBC’s over-groveling undermined the most important thing: that Donald Trump really did actively incite a violent insurrection resulting in $2.7 million in damages to the Capitol, 174 assaulted police officers, and four belated law enforcement suicides. And he’s abusing the courts to stifle journalism critical of his radical extremist authoritarianism.

It sounds like BBC leadership isn’t entirely invertebrate. While BBC officials like Chair BBC chair Samir Shah admit the edits were an “error of judgment” (unlike executives at CBS) it appears they’ll actually be putting up a fight in court of Trump follows through:

“I want to be very clear with you – our position has not changed. There is no basis for a defamation case and we are determined to fight this.”

As Trump’s health, power, and influence wanes, this sort of bullying is only going to become less and less effective and more and more toothless. In the interim, it would be nice if some major media institutions could dig deep and find a little backbone; especially given how many lawyers and donors would be happy to help fund a pro bono acceleration of Donald Trump’s inevitable collapse.

Filed Under: defamation, documentary, donald trump, insurrection, journalism, lawsuit, media, uk
Companies: bbc