Donald Trump Threatens BBC With $5 Billion Lawsuit

Late Friday night (November 14, 2025), President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he intended to sue the BBC for billions of dollars. This threat follows an edited and misleading version of his speech on January 6, 2021, appearing in a Panorama documentary made by the media company. He claimed that the altered footage was used to damage his reputation.

Despite the BBC publicly apologizing to Trump about the incident, it appears that he has no intention of forgiving them. “We’ll sue them for anywhere between $1 billion and $5 billion, probably sometime next week,” he told the press. The President of the United States further elaborated and explained that he must sue them, regardless of whether they’re sorry or not. “Well, I think I have to do it. They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”

Samir Shah, the Chair of the BBC, issued a statement on November 13, 2025, taking accountability for the company’s misleading edit. He apologized on behalf of the entire company for making Trump seem like he was encouraging violence. He also promised that the modified speech would not be broadcast ever again.

We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.

The BBC would like to apologise to President Trump for that error of judgement. This programme was not scheduled to be re-broadcast and will not be broadcast again in this form on any BBC platforms.

The BBC claimed that while they were sincerely sorry about the ordeal, Trump doesn’t have a valid defamation case. The broadcasting company doubled down and said that its apology and pulling the documentary were enough. They made it clear that the BBC would not be compensating the President of the United States.

The Panorama documentary scandal has also led to two resignations. BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, who was with the company for 20 years and the corporation’s chief of news, Deborah Turness, both left shortly after Trump reacted to the footage.