Donald Trump "doesn't care" whether his lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Company is successful, according to the Freedom of the Press Foundation advocacy director.
The president leveled a $1 billion libel lawsuit at the BBC, warning damages could reach a staggering $5 billion after a documentary aired with two quotes from Trump spliced together. Trump previously claimed the BBC made "false, defamatory, disparaging and inflammatory statements" in a documentary published before the November 2024 presidential election.
Two quotes from Trump during a rambling, hour-long speech were placed next to one another in the documentary. Trump had told those at the rally, "We’re going to walk down [to the Capitol] and I’ll be there with you." An hour later, he said, "And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore."
The BBC director general, Tim Davie, said he thinks the company "made a mistake, and there was an editorial breach" in the editing, and subsequently resigned.
While the segment was never published in the United States, Trump has thrown himself behind a libel case against the broadcasting company, though according to Seth Stern, there are ulterior motives at play.
Speaking with The Hill, advocacy director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation Stern said, "He doesn't care if he wins or not. The point is to intimidate and punish those he views as critical to him." Davie, as well as head of news Deborah Turness, resigned Monday, November 10.
An internal memo at the BBC suggested two parts of Trump's speech in the Panorama show had been edited together to make it look as though he explicitly encouraged the Capitol Hill riot of January 2021.
Trump has since responded to the documentary and the resignations of Davie and Turness in a post to Truth Social. He wrote: "The TOP people in the BBC, including TIM DAVIE, the BOSS, are all quitting/FIRED, because they were caught 'doctoring' my very good (PERFECT!) speech of January 6th.
"Thank you to The Telegraph for exposing these Corrupt 'Journalists.' These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election. On top of everything else, they are from a Foreign Country, one that many consider our Number One Ally. What a terrible thing for Democracy!"