Donald Trump slams ‘corrupt’ BBC apology during GB News appearance

US President Donald Trump has dismissed the BBC’s apology over the editing of a documentary about him saying if it was “unintentional” then they wouldn’t have needed to say sorry. In an exclusive chat with GB News presenter Bev Turner, Trump opened up about the scandal, which erupted after Panorama spliced together two parts of his January 6 speech — nearly an hour apart — to create the impression he had encouraged supporters to storm the US Capitol. The corporation admitted its edit created a “mistaken impression,” but insisted the error was unintentional and denied any basis for defamation.

“It’s fine,” he said. “We apologise! But when you say it’s unintentional, I guess if it’s unintentional, you don’t apologise. They made a beautiful statement, and they made it into a not beautiful statement,” he said. Known for his love of the phrase “fake news” the President said: “This is beyond fake. This is corrupt.”

The apology comes after the BBC were caught allegedly doctoring a second Donald Trump clip. The apology issued was about a clip of a Donald Trump speech, that was edited and aired in a Panorama documentary last year.

Issued on Thursday November 13, over a fortnight after the broadcast the statement read: “This programme was reviewed after criticism of how President Donald Trump’s 6th January 2021 speech was edited. During that sequence, we showed excerpts taken from different parts of the speech.

“However, we accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.

“The BBC would like to apologise to President Trump for that error of judgement.This programme was not scheduled to be re-broadcast and will not be broadcast again in this form on any BBC platforms.”

A BBC spokesperson further said: “Lawyers for the BBC have written to President Trump’s legal team in response to a letter received on Sunday.

“BBC chair Samir Shah has separately sent a personal letter to the White House making clear to President Trump that he and the corporation are sorry for the edit of the president’s speech on 6 January 2021, which featured in the programme.

“The BBC has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary Trump: A Second Chance? on any BBC platforms.”

Trump has subsequently threatened to take legal action against the broadcaster saying: “We’ll sue them for between $1bn and $5bn probably sometime next week. I think I have to do it.”