BBC in chaos as Starmer backs Trump in major phone call after $5bn lawsuit | UK | News
Sir Keir Starmer is expected to hold a meeting at the weekend Donald Trump Emphasizing that although the BBC is a respected British institution, it must maintain the highest standards and correct errors quickly. The call comes as Trump plans to sue the BBC for up to £3.8bn after it edited one of his speeches to make it appear he was inciting the January 6 Capitol riot. The US President told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday evening that he would file a lawsuit for “between $1 billion and $5 billion, probably sometime next week.”
On Thursday, the BBC announced that Trump had inadvertently called for violence in an edit of the January 6 speech, suggesting that the speech would not be rebroadcast. The publisher apologized but said it would not pay compensation.
Despite the BBC’s apology, Trump said he still intends to take legal action.
He said: “I guess I have to do it. They even admitted cheating. They changed the words that came out of my mouth. As you can imagine, the people of the UK are very angry about what happened because it shows that the BBC is fake news.”
This weekend, Sir Keir Starmer is set to tell the US President that the BBC needs to “put its own order”, The Telegraph reports. Trump reportedly said Starmer was “very embarrassed” by the scandal.
Former chief executive Tim Davie and BBC News chief Deborah Turness resigned following the editing scandal, marking a serious crisis for the public broadcaster.
The dispute appears to have escalated further this evening following the announcement that Rutger Bregman will be BBC Radio 4’s 2025 Reith speaker.
In his speech, Time for Monsters, Trump labeled Nigel Farage and some tech billionaires as “a bit pretentious”, comparing them to fascist figures of the 1930s. One audience member noted that the conference “makes it clear that Trump is one of the monsters of the game.”
This evening the White House called Mr Bregman a “rabid anti-Trump individual” and criticized his lecturers for his outspoken criticism of US President Trump. Daily Mail reported.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told The Mail on Sunday this evening: “The BBC has been caught red-handed altering President Trump’s words multiple times, so it’s no surprise they’ve appointed a rabid anti-Trumper to lecture.”
The Reith Lectures will be broadcast on Radio 4 from 25 November. The BBC emphasized that the views expressed were those of the speakers, not the company, and that these views would be “discussed and debated after the conference”.
The author has published four books on history, philosophy and economics, including Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World, which has been translated into 32 languages.
The four lectures: A Time of Monsters, How to Start a Moral Revolution, A Realist’s Utopia and Zoom Out will be recorded in London, Liverpool, Edinburgh and the USA and later broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service.
