US President Donald Trump has said he will take legal action against the BBC over how his speech was edited by Panorama, after the corporation apologised but refused to compensate him.
Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Friday evening, Trump said: “We’ll sue them for anywhere between $1bn [£759m] and $5bn, probably sometime next week.”
On Thursday, the BBC said the edit of the 6 January 2021 speech had unintentionally given “the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action” and said it would not be broadcast again.
The corporation apologised to the president but said it would not pay financial compensation.
The BBC released that statement after Trump’s lawyers threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn in damages unless the corporation issued a retraction, apology and paid him compensation.
“I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters of his plan to take legal action. “They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”
The president said he had not raised the issue with Sir Keir Starmer but that the prime minister had asked to speak to him. Trump said he would call Starmer over the weekend.
A search of public court record databases confirmed that no lawsuit had been filed in federal or state court in Florida as of Friday evening.
In a separate interview on Saturday recorded before his comments on Air Force One, Trump said said he had an “obligation” to sue the BBC, adding: “If you don’t do it, you don’t stop it from happening again with other people.”
He called the edit “egregious” and “worse than the Kamala thing”, a reference to a dispute he had with US news outlet CBS over an interview on the 60 Minutes programme with his 2024 election opponent Kamala Harris.
In July this year, US media company Paramount Global agreed to pay $16m (£13.5m) to settle a legal dispute over that interview.
