The BBC apologised to the president after airing an edited version of his speech on January 6, 2021, splicing two parts of his address which took place almost an hour apart.
In a letter to Trump, the British broadcaster’s chair Samir Shah personally apologised for the edit of the speech and accepted it “unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech”.
Trump’s lawyer had previously sent the BBC a letter demanding an apology and threatened to file a US$1 billion ($1.5 billion) lawsuit.
The president said he still plans to sue the BBC, potentially now for a much larger sum.
”We’ll sue them for anywhere between a billion and five billion dollars, probably some time next week. I think I have to do it,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“They’ve even admitted that they cheated.”
The legal dispute was sparked by an edition of the BBC’s flagship current affairs series Panorama, titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” broadcast days before the 2024 US presidential election.
A third-party production company spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.”
Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
Trump earlier declared the BBC was “fake news”, adding that the people of the UK are “very angry” about the edit.
He said he would raise the issue with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“I’m going to call him over the weekend. He actually put a call in to me. He’s very embarrassed,” Trump said.
Director-general Tim Davie, along with news chief Deborah Turness, quit on Sunday, saying the scandal was damaging the BBC and “as the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, the buck stops with me.”
