{"id":129320,"date":"2025-11-12T14:49:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T14:49:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/129320\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T14:49:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T14:49:06","slug":"uks-starmer-refuses-to-say-whether-he-will-urge-trump-to-drop-his-1-billion-bbc-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/129320\/","title":{"rendered":"UK’s Starmer refuses to say whether he will urge Trump to drop his $1 billion BBC threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer refused to say Wednesday whether he would urge U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a> to drop his threat to sue the BBC<\/a> for a billion dollars over the broadcaster’s edit of a speech he made after losing the 2020 presidential election.<\/p>\n

During his weekly questioning in the House of Commons, Starmer was asked by Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, whether he would intervene in the row between Trump and the British public broadcaster<\/a>, and to rule out the idea that the British people would hand over money to the U.S. president.<\/p>\n

Instead of responding directly, Starmer reiterated the government’s line<\/a> since the BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie<\/a>, announced his resignation on Sunday because of the scandal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe in a strong and independent BBC,\u201d he said. \u201cSome would rather BBC didn\u2019t exist, I\u2019m not one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he added that \u201cwhere mistakes are made, they do need to get their house in order.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview that aired Tuesday on Fox News, Trump said he intended to go through with his threat to sue the BBC, a century-old institution under growing pressure in an era of polarized politics and changing media viewing habits.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I have to,” he said. \u201cBecause I think they defrauded the public and they\u2019ve admitted it.\u201d <\/p>\n

The president\u2019s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, sent the threat to the BBC over the way a documentary edited<\/a> his Jan. 6, 2021, speech before a mob of his followers stormed<\/a> the U.S. Capitol. The letter demanded an apology to the president and a \u201cfull and fair\u201d retraction of the documentary along with other \u201cfalse, defamatory, disparaging, misleading or inflammatory statements\u201d about Trump.<\/p>\n

If the BBC<\/a> does not comply with the demands by 5 p.m. EST Friday, then Trump will enforce his legal rights, the letter said.<\/p>\n

The row centers on an edition of the BBC\u2019s flagship current affairs series \u201cPanorama,\u201d titled \u201cTrump: A Second Chance?\u201d days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.<\/p>\n

The third-party production company that made the film spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and \u201cfight like hell.\u201d <\/p>\n

Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.<\/p>\n

BBC Chairman Samir Shah apologized Monday for the misleading edit that he said gave \u201cthe impression of a direct call for violent action.\u201d <\/p>\n

In addition to Davie’s resignation, the news chief Deborah Turness quit Sunday over accusations of bias and misleading editing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer refused to say Wednesday whether he would urge U.S. President Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[81209,127,114,4410,122,42,43,238,640,40,38,41,39,126],"class_list":["post-129320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-81209","tag-article","tag-business","tag-elections","tag-general-news","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-public-media","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}