Trump says he will sue the BBC for up to $5 billion over speech edits

President Donald Trump has said he will sue the BBC for billions of dollars after the British public broadcaster published a misleading edit of one of his speeches.

LONDON — President Donald Trump has said he will sue the BBC for billions of dollars after the British public broadcaster published a misleading edit of one of his speeches.

The BBC has apologized to Trump for the edit but said it had not defamed him and would not pay financial compensation. The broadcaster's director-general and head of news both resigned in the wake of the incident.

“We’ll sue them for anywhere between $1bn and $5bn, probably sometime next week,” Trump said, speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Friday evening.

“I think I have to do it,” he added. “They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.”

The controversy centers on BBC show "Panorama" editing together two distant moments from Trump’s 6 January 2021 speech — his call to supporters to walk to the Capitol and, over 50 minutes later, his line “We fight. We fight like hell”— creating the impression they were spoken consecutively.