The BBC reports a figure of $5 billion, other news sources, including the FT, say $10 billion. This is down to Trump suing for one count of defamation and one count of violating Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. The president is demanding "at least" $5bn in damages for each count.
I'm not sure Trump actually understands what the BBC did. Watch this:
tRump claims the BBC took beautiful words out of his mouth and put in terrible words, so now he has to sue them. He really must have stuck his foot in it to be blaming AI for his fuckups. #DementedDon #Pinks #ProudBlue #Lawsuits #BBC
— SaltyBitchables (@saltybitchables.bsky.social) 15 December 2025 at 22:11
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Nobody 'put terrible words in his mouth' using AI, the BBC simply cut out 50 minutes of terrible words when they edited his January 6, 2021, speech, which immediately preceded the rioting and the sacking of the Capitol building.
The worst thing now is for the BBC to negotiate an out-of-court settlement of a few million dollars, as CBS and ABC have already done. This is exactly what Trump and his legal team want. The BBC should lawyer up and go for a jury trial sometime next year. I suspect, however, that the famously pusillanimous BBC board will opt for the former, just in case Trump wins. And to avoid the BBC being banned from the White House.
The corporation has previously admitted or acknowledged that the edit had given "the mistaken impression" he had "made a direct call for violent action, but disagreed that there was basis for a defamation claim.
The admission that the edit suggested he had made a “direct” call for violent action was the right thing to do. It is the keyword in all of this isn't it? The BBC didn't concede that he hadn’t called for violence indirectly, which is what virtually everyone not infected with the MAGA violence knows is what happened.
I posted about the missing 50 minutes and having looked at the text and listened to the speech, I defy any reasonable person, any man on the Clapham omnibus, to argue that it wasn’t an extremely long call for violence. He knowingly and wilfully cranked up the rhetoric to incite the mob. This is as clear and obvious as can be.
The edit was a perfectly reasonable one simply to avoid wasting time getting from A to B. It did give the impression he directly called for violence, but that is of minor importance in my opinion. It’s the difference between hard, eyewitness or video evidence and circumstantial evidence. Sometimes, circumstantial stuff is more than enough to convict.
Also, if it comes to court, the BBC will be able to demand something known in the US legal system as ‘discovery’ or the handing over of evidence in the hands of the claimant, to the defence. Special prosecutor Jack Smith, appointed by Biden’s then Attorney General Merrick Garland, has amassed a lot of evidence about the prior planning of the 6 January by Trump and his associates and all of it will be available to the defence team.
It would be Trump’s worst nightmare if he understood it.
The president is bringing the case as a private citizen and in his home state of Florida, where the programme never aired (it was never broadcast in the US at all). This is a help to him since there are judges who may lean towards his version of events, and the likelihood of getting a less-than-neutral jury is increased. But even that isn't guaranteed. A few days ago, the Democrats won the mayoral election in Miami, a previous Trump stronghold, for the first time in 30 years. The MAGA tide is turning.
The flimsy case could be thrown out immediately, or it could be accepted. If he lost, he could (and would) take it to a higher court, and it may even end up in the Supreme Court, if they chose to hear it.
The BBC may eventually lose, but I think the chances are vanishingly small and the damages awarded just a fraction of what he has demanded anyway.
No, the BBC owes it to us, the licence fee payers, and the world, to stand up to Trump and get all the evidence heard in court. Unfortunately, the BBC board doesn't have the backbone, and the British government will put enormous pressure on the BBC to settle.
They need Trump on their side in Ukraine, knowing he would use military support for an embattled nation in Europe, holding back the murderous Russian horde, to extort money from Britain's national broadcaster. That such a man, the most openly corrupt president in history by a long chalk, and who lies as easily as breathing, could win damages from the BBC is appalling, but a sign of the times we live in.
