U.S. President Donald Trump has accused the BBC of interfering in the 2024 presidential election, saying the British state broadcaster manipulated coverage of his January 6, 2021 speech to damage his campaign.
His comments followed the resignations of BBC Director General Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness, who stepped down after a whistleblower revealed the network had aired an edited version of Trump’s remarks in its documentary Trump: A Second Chance?, broadcast just a week before the election.
According to reports in The Telegraph (UK), the programme spliced together sections of Trump’s speech out of order and intercut them with footage filmed before he began speaking. The revelations, detailed in a memo from former BBC standards adviser Michael Prescott, prompted outrage within the corporation and the wider media.
Trump thanked The Telegraph (UK) for uncovering what he called “corrupt journalists,” accusing the BBC of trying to “tip the scales of a presidential election.” He added that the alleged interference from “a foreign country” was “a terrible thing for democracy.”
The BBC, funded by a compulsory £174.50 licence fee and partly subsidised by the UK government, has faced repeated criticism from the White House, which has labelled it a “leftist propaganda machine.” Trump’s administration has also accused the UK’s Labour Party of aiding Democrats in swing states during the campaign, an allegation British officials deny.
