Category: United kingdom
Trump sues BBC for billions over ‘deceptive and defamatory’ edit of his Jan. 6 speech, blasts foreign election interference
President Donald Trump filed a massive defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation on Monday over an edit of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech that appeared in a BBC “Panorama” documentary.
The lawsuit claims that the BBC’s “deceptive and defamatory distortion, doctoring, manipulation, and splicing damaged President Trump in his occupation, damaged his professional reputation, and portrayed him as engaging in supposed calls for rioting and violence that he never actually made.”
‘The FAKE NEWS “reporters” in the UK are just as dishonest and full of s**t as the ones here in America.’
The complaint notes further that the “aggressively anti-Trump” documentary, which aired shortly before the 2024 presidential election and painted Kamala Harris as an optimal candidate, constituted “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
A tale of two speeches
Trump originally said at 12:12 p.m. in his speech on Jan. 6, 2021:
Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down — and I’ll be there with you — we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down. Any one you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness.
The president noted nearly an hour later after first raising concerns about voting irregularities and potential fraud in the 2020 election, “Most people would stand there at nine o’clock in the evening and say, ‘I want to thank you very much,’ and they go off to some other life, but I said, ‘Something’s wrong here, something’s really wrong — can’t have happened.’ And we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”
The “Panorama” documentary spliced and reorganized Trump’s remarks to make it appear as though he said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”
In addition to creating a false narrative by coupling two parts of the speech that were divided by over 50 minutes’ worth of content and omitting Trump’s call for supporters to behave “peacefully,” the documentary showed flag-waving men descending on the Capitol after the president spoke — despite the video having been recorded before Trump’s speech.
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The Telegraph obtained and reported on a whistleblower memo earlier this year revealing that there were concerns at the BBC over the apparently deceptive work.
The whistleblower memo noted that the “mangled” footage made Trump “‘say’ things [he] never actually said” and insinuated, with the help of the footage of men marching on the Capitol, that “Trump’s supporters had taken up his ‘call to arms.'”
Too little, too late
Last month, the BBC came under fire both in the United States and in the United Kingdom.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Telegraph, “Trust in the media is at an all-time low because of deceptive editing, misleading reporting, and outright lies. This is yet another example, of many, highlighting why countless Americans turn to alternative media sources to get their news.”
Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, “The FAKE NEWS ‘reporters’ in the UK are just as dishonest and full of s**t as the ones here in America!!!”
“This is a total disgrace. The BBC has doctored footage of Trump to make it look as though he incited a riot — when he in fact said no such thing,” wrote former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “We have Britain’s national broadcaster using a flagship programme to tell palpable untruths about Britain’s closest ally. Is anyone at the BBC going to take responsibility — and resign?”
In the face of mounting pressure, the BBC issued a retraction, and the director-general of the BBC, Tim Davie, and Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, both resigned in disgrace.
“Like all public organizations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent, and accountable,” Davie said in statement. “Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made, and as director-general I have to take ultimate responsibility.”
Turness similarly assumed some responsibility for the fiasco, noting the controversy had “reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC” and adding that “the buck stops with me.”
‘The BBC had no regard for the truth.’
Turness suggested, however, that the broadcast corporation was not biased.
“In public life, leaders need to be fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down,” said Turness. “While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.”
Samir Shah, the chair of the BBC, subsequently sent a personal letter to the White House apologizing for the edit; however, the network refused to pay compensation, claiming that there was no basis for Trump’s defamation claim.
Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss encouraged Trump to take legal action against the BBC, suggesting in a Nov. 15 interview that the network’s apology was insufficient “because they keep doing it again and again. They have painted a completely false picture of President Trump in Britain over a number of years. They’ve done the same thing about conservatives in our country.”
Pay the piper
Trump’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and demands judgment against the BBC for at least $5 billion in damages, states:
The lack of any effort by the BBC to publish content even remotely resembling objective journalism, or to maintain even a slight semblance of objectivity in the Panorama Documentary, demonstrates that the BBC had no regard for the truth about President Trump, and that the doctoring of his Speech was not inadvertent, but instead was an intentional component of the BBC’s effort to craft as one-sided an impression and narrative against President Trump as possible.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told the Guardian that “President Trump’s powerhouse lawsuit is holding the BBC accountable for its defamation and reckless election interference just as he has held other fake news mainstream media responsible for their wrongdoing.”
A spokesperson for the network said in a statement, “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case.”
A spokesperson for the prime minister’s office noted that while Downing Street will always “defend the principle of a strong, independent BBC as a trusted and relied-upon national broadcaster reporting without fear or favor,” the prime minister’s office has “also consistently said it is vitally important that they act to maintain trust, correcting mistakes quickly when they occur.”
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Foreign Leaders Caught Orchestrating Campaign To Censor American Right-Wing Media Companies
strategist Morgan McSweeney began shaping Labour Together into an anti-Corbyn vehicle
British Official Floats Abandoning Ancient Legal Tradition Enshrined By Magna Carta
‘Juries are not just part of our tradition’
UK To Announce ‘Milkshake Tax’ As Budget Crisis Deepens
‘It will see businesses that played by the rules punished’
BBC execs step down after network accused of deceptive edit of Trump’s January 6 speech
An internal memo has rocked the leadership at the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Last week, another outlet in the United Kingdom revealed that the memo had accused the BBC of deceptively editing footage of President Donald Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021.
‘We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country any more.’
The Telegraph reported that Michael Prescott, a former independent external adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, wrote a dossier on the BBC’s alleged bias before leaving his position in June.
The report accused the BBC of splicing together Trump’s comments on Jan. 6 to appear as if they were made in the same breath, even though the remarks were about 54 minutes apart.
As Blaze News previously reported, the edit in question appeared on the BBC’s one-hour Panorama special, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?”
The documentary featured a clip purporting to show Trump saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
In reality, Trump’s actual statement was:
“We’re gonna walk down, and I’ll be there with you. We’re gonna walk down. We’re gonna walk down, any one you want, but I think right here, we’re gonna walk down to the Capitol, and we’re gonna cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated. Lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
The edited clip also featured Trump’s words from about 54 minutes later, when he was discussing election integrity.
“Most people would stand there at 9 o’clock in the evening and say, ‘I wanna thank you very much,’ and they go off to some other life, but I said something’s wrong here, something’s really wrong, can’t have happened, and we fight.”
“We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country any more,” Trump added.
Now, BBC Director-General Tim Davie and CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness have both handed in their resignations.
RELATED: BBC allegedly deceptively edited Trump’s Jan. 6 speech into riot lie
Tim DAvie. Photo by Dominic Lipinski/Getty Images
Davie issued a memo to his staff on Saturday and claimed that it was completely his decision to step down.
“I wanted to let you know that I have decided to leave the BBC after 20 years. This is entirely my decision,” Davie wrote, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The director said he had been reflecting on the “very intense personal and professional demands” that come with his role and claimed that “in these increasingly polarized times, the BBC is of unique value and speaks to the very best of us.”
Without directly mentioning the video editing controversy, Davie called the BBC a “critical ingredient of a healthy society.”
‘As the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, the buck stops with me.’
Turness, however, was openly self-deprecating in her decision to resign.
“The ongoing controversy around the Panorama on President Trump has reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC — an institution that I love,” she wrote in a memo. “As the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, the buck stops with me — and I took the decision to offer my resignation to the Director-General last night.”
She added that “in public life, leaders” must be “fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down.”
Still, Turness said despite the mistakes, any “allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.”
RELATED: The UK wants to enforce its censorship laws in the US. The First Amendment begs to differ.
CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness, October 13, 2022 in London, England. Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images
As the BBC is a government-run institution, the ruling Labour Party chimed in on the controversy.
“I want to thank Tim Davie for his service to public service broadcasting over many years. He has led the BBC through a period of significant change and helped the organization to grip the challenges it has faced in recent years,” said U.K. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy.
Nandy said the BBC charter, which defines “Object, Mission and Public Purposes” for the organization, will be reviewed to help the BBC “adapt to this new era” and secure its role at the “heart of national life” for the future.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
America can’t afford to lose Britain — again
The Labour government that rules the United Kingdom is hardly a year old, but its time is already coming to an end. Its popular legitimacy has collapsed, and it is visibly losing control of both the British state and its territories.
Every conversation not about proximate policy is about the successor government: which party will take over, who will be leading it, and what’s needed to reverse what looks to be an unalterable course. What is known, however, is that the next government will assume the reins of a fading state after what will likely be the final election under the present, failed dispensation.
We should equip our friends on the other side of the Atlantic with the lessons of the new right’s ascendancy and of a nation-first government in America.
The Britain birthed by New Labour three decades ago, deracinated and unmoored from its historic roots, is unquestionably at its end. Its elements — most especially the importation of malign Americanisms like propositional nationhood — have led directly to a country that is, according to academics like David Betz of King’s College London, on the precipice of something like a civil war. That’s the worst-case scenario.
The best case is that a once-great nation made itself poor and has become wracked with civil strife, including the jihadi variety. It is a prospect that will make yesteryear’s worst of Ulster seem positively bucolic.
American policymaking is curiously inert in the face of the dissolution of its closest historic ally. This is not because Britain’s decline is anything new: the slow-motion implosion of that nation’s military power has been known to the American defense establishment for most of the past 20 years. Ben Barry’s excellent new book, “The Rise and Fall of the British Army 1975–2025,” offers many examples to this end, including the 2008 fighting in Basra in which American leadership had to rescue a failing British effort.
The knowledge that Britain is facing a regime-level crisis has remained mostly confined to the establishment. Outside of it, the American right has mostly dwelled on an admixture of Anglophilia and special-relationship nostalgia, obscuring the truth of Britain’s precipitous decline.
The American left, of course, entirely endorses what the British regime has done to its citizenry — from the repression of entrepreneurialism and the suppression of free speech to the ethnic replacement of the native population — and regards the outcomes as entirely positive.
It is past time for that inertia to end. The last election will redefine the United Kingdom — and therefore America’s relationship with it. Even before it comes, the rudderless and discredited Labour government has placed Britain into a de facto ungoverned state that may persist for years to come.
The United States has an obligation to protect its own citizenry from the consequences of this reality. It also has what might be called a filial duty to assert conditions for Britain to reclaim itself.
That duty means taking a series of actions, including denying entry to the United States to British officials who engage in the suppression of civil liberties. American security and intelligence should focus on the threats posed by Britain’s burgeoning Islamist population. The U.S. should give preferential immigration treatment to ethnic English, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish who are seeking to escape misgovernance or persecution in the United Kingdom.
Furthermore, the United States should make it clear that the robust Chinese Communist Party penetration and influence operations in U.K. governance will result in a concurrent diminishment of American trust and cooperation.
Also necessary is the American government’s engagement with pro-liberty and pro-British elements within the U.K. This means working with Reform U.K., which presently looks to gain about 400 parliamentary seats in the next election. Its unique combination of a dynamic leader in Nigel Farage, intellectual heavyweights like James Orr and Danny Kruger, and operational energy in Zia Yusuf makes it a compelling and increasingly plausible scenario.
RELATED: Cry ‘God for England’
Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Although the Tories are polling poorly and have had their reputations battered by their substandard record in government over the past decade, they nonetheless merit American engagement.
America’s role here is not to endorse, and still less to select, new leadership for Britain, which would be both an impossibility and an impropriety. However, we should equip our friends on the other side of the Atlantic with the lessons of the new right’s ascendancy and of a nation-first government in America.
In the fraught summer of 1940, the American poet Alice Duer Miller wrote, “In a world where England is finished and dead, I do not wish to live.” The island nation has not feared its own end at foreign arms for a thousand years. But its crisis today is from within, carrying existential stakes.
The current British regime is nearing its end, and the last election is coming. So too is our decision on how to engage it in the years ahead.
Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.
Tommy Robinson has the last laugh after politically motivated terrorism arrest: ‘Free speech won!’
Tommy Robinson has long drawn the ire and attention of British establishmentarians by raising hell about the fallout of mass immigration, the failure of multiculturalism in England, the threats posed by radical Islam, and the cover-up of the Pakistani rape-gang scandal.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, various other politicians, and even some woke clergymen have condemned him; multiple social media platforms have banned him; and he was even told to stay clear of an entire city.
‘Thank you for raising the flag of England whilst so many cowards cowered.’
The desperation to shut Robinson up or, at the very least, make him go away manifested last year in the form of an unjustified police stop, which resulted in his indictment on a terrorism charge under the British equivalent of the Patriot Act.
To the likely chagrin of Robinson’s detractors in parliament and to the delight of his supporters on the scene, Judge Sam Goozee of the Westminster Magistrates’ Court cleared the 42-year-old activist on Tuesday, agreeing with the defense that the stop was unlawful and that police discriminated against Robinson because of what he stands for and his political beliefs.
“That judge’s verdict is a slam down against the police,” Robinson told reporters outside the courthouse. “Read what he says. Read about the evidence. It was corrupt. It was unlawful.”
“I’m frustrated still. I should be happy. I’m not happy because I shouldn’t be put through this time and time again,” Robinson added.
RELATED: The UK wants to enforce its censorship laws in the US. The First Amendment begs to differ.
photo by Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images
On July 28, 2024 — a day after organizing a political rally — Robinson was detained by Kent police under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act while attempting to travel to Spain, where he now lives. During his detention, Robinson was told to give police the PIN necessary to access his phone.
Robinson allegedly told police, “Not a chance, bruv. … You look like a c**t, so you ain’t having it,” adding that his phone contained sensitive “journalist material” regarding “vulnerable girls.”
Alisdair Williamson, Robinson’s lawyer, emphasized during the trial that Robinson “was stopped unlawfully, detained unlawfully for 40 minutes, and asked questions that were something to do with his political beliefs.”
Judge Goozee evidently agreed, finding on Tuesday that the stop did not appear motivated by any genuine suspicion of terrorism but rather by Robinson’s beliefs, which altogether qualify under the law as a protected characteristic. The judge also took issue with the police officers’ apparent selective amnesia regarding the incident and credibility.
Goozee said in his ruling, “I cannot put out of my mind that it was actually what you stood for and your beliefs that acted as the principle reason for the stop,” the Guardian reported.
“I cannot convict you,” the judge added.
In addition to questioning what happens now to the counterterrorism officers who unlawfully targeted him, Robinson thanked Elon Musk after the trial, stating, “I’m forever grateful. If you didn’t step in to fund my legal fight for this, then I’d probably be in jail. So today, free speech won!”
Elon Musk responded, “Thank you for raising the flag of England whilst so many cowards cowered.”
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
