Someone should remind Trump that Truss has no credibility in the UK.
U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed that disgraced former Prime Minister Liz Truss is a ‘voice of authority’ as part of his defamation lawsuit against the BBC.
Trump wants to sue the BBC after Panorama broadcast a misleading edit of a speech he made before the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021.
During the speech, before a riot at the US Capitol, Trump told a crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
More than 50 minutes later in the speech, he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell.”
In the edited Panorama clip, it showed him as saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
The BBC has apologised with two of its top figures, including the director-general, resigning amid concerns about impartiality.
Truss, an ally of Trump, accused the BBC of peddling ‘fake news’ and of being ‘left leaning’.
Legal experts have said that Trump’s lawsuit is unlikely to succeed, given the high bar Trump would have to meet to prove that there was intentional malice, and given that the Panorama documentary is not available in the U.S., Trump would also have a difficult time proving reputational harm.
Nonetheless, Trump has followed through on his legal threat and on Monday evening filed a lawsuit against the BBC totalling up to $10bn (£7.5bn).
Trump reckons the voice of Britain’s shortest serving prime minister, Truss, is proof that the BBC needs to be ‘held accountable.’ The same Liz Truss whose disastrous mini-budget led to market turmoil and the pound collapsing, resulting in her being booted from office after just 45 days.
The lawsuit states: “No less an authority than the United Kingdom’s former Prime Minister, Liz Truss, discussed this bias, the need to hold the BBC accountable, and the BBC’s pattern of actual malice.”
Someone should remind Trump that Truss has no credibility in the UK.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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