The editing of Donald Trump’s speech on 6 January 2021 has embroiled the BBC in controversy, led to the resignations of its top leaders, and given fuel to claims of media bias at the storied British broadcaster.
A dossier from a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee flagged the edit, among other instances of purported bias in the outlet’s coverage, which was leaked to the Telegraph. As a public sector organization, the BBC is required to be impartial, though it often faces claims of bias, particularly from the right.
In a broadcast of the news show Panorama before the 2024 election, Trump’s speech was edited to put together two sentences that were actually 54 minutes apart, making it appear as though he was telling people they would walk to the US Capitol and “fight like hell”.
After Trump’s speech, thousands of his supporters descended on the US Capitol, some of them entering the building and brawling with police to try to stop the electoral count. Five people died within days, marking a violent start to Joe Biden’s presidency.
The scandal had provided Trump another avenue to attack the media, this time overseas, and to relitigate the circumstances of the 2020 election and his attempts to overturn the results. He has threatened legal action against the BBC.
“The TOP people in the BBC, including TIM DAVIE, the BOSS, are all quitting/FIRED, because they were caught ‘doctoring’ my very good (PERFECT!) speech of January 6th,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Thank you to The Telegraph for exposing these Corrupt ‘Journalists.’ These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election. On top of everything else, they are from a Foreign Country, one that many consider our Number One Ally. What a terrible thing for Democracy!”
The BBC’s chair, Samir Shah, called the edit an “error in judgement”.
What did Trump say in his speech on January 6?
Before supporters stormed the US Capitol, Trump gave a speech to rally the crowd, who assembled in Washington under the belief that he had won the 2020 election and Biden had stolen his victory.
The word “fight” is used throughout the speech, including in the line: “We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Throughout the lengthy speech, Trump details what he claimed as evidence for malfeasance in the election, though the courts rejected these claims when his team and allies brought lawsuits seeking to overturn the results.
He also calls on Mike Pence, his then vice-president, to “come through for us” by rejecting the electoral votes – something Pence did not do – saying it would be a “sad day for our country” if Pence didn’t.
“It is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy,” Trump said in the speech. “And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you … we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.”
The speech was edited – but did Trump actually incite a riot?
In the various inquiries and court cases over Trump’s role in the insurrection, the president’s legal team has sought to highlight a part of the speech where he said people should march to the Capitol to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” as evidence that the president did not incite illegal behavior.
But the January 6 committee, a select congressional committee that investigated the insurrection and sought to recreate a timeline of Trump’s actions that day, found that it was Trump’s speechwriters who added the “peacefully and patriotically” language, while the calls to fight were Trump’s own words.
“President Trump used the phrase scripted for him by his White House speechwriters, ‘peacefully and patriotically’ once, about 20 minutes into his speech,” the committee wrote in its report. “Then he spent the next 50-or-so minutes amping up his crowd with lies about the election, attacking his own vice-president and Republican members of Congress, and exhorting the crowd to fight.”
Before January 6, Trump had resisted calls from his staff to make clear in his tweets that the Capitol rally should remain peaceful. And on the day of the insurrection, he rebuffed repeated attempts from his staff and family members to quell the riot happening at the Capitol. He eventually relented, adding the phrase “Stay peaceful!” to one of his tweets at the behest of his daughter Ivanka.
How did his followers interpret Trump’s actions related to the event?
According to watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, 210 defendants in January 6 cases said in their filings, letters or public statements that they were responding to Trump’s calls when they went to the DC event.
“CREW’s examination of court filings, transcripts, and news items regarding defendants in January 6th cases shows that defendants – ranging from convicted seditionists such as members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to individual members of the public –considered Trump their leader and believed they were following his lead by joining the insurrection,” the group wrote.
After a December 2020 post from Trump that said the big protest on DC on January 6 “will be wild,” a member of the Oath Keepers in Florida wrote in a message, “He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!! Sir Yes Sir!!! Gentlemen we are heading to DC pack your shit!!” according to CREW.
Trump eventually told his followers to leave the Capitol, 187 minutes after his speech ended and after they were rioting, posting on Twitter that they should go home. This call worked for many, which CREW noted was “maybe most illustrative of Trump’s control of the mob”.
How does it fit into his rewriting of the 2020 election?
Trump has never conceded his loss in the 2020 election. And since he regained the White House, he has sought to revisit the loss: he has installed people who played roles in seeking to overturn the results or advanced the stolen election narrative into government roles, and some are reported to be working on further investigations of the 2020 election.
During his 2024 campaign, he cast the events of January 6 as a “day of love”. On his first day in office in 2025, he granted clemency to all those charged for their actions at the Capitol riot, including those charged and convicted for violent acts.
This weekend, he also issued preemptive pardons for a host of his allies involved in seeking to overturn the election results.Among those receiving the clemency were Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and those who served as false elector slates in swing states who claimed Trump was the rightful winner. The federal pardon doesn’t apply to state-level charges, which some states have brought against the slates.
Will Trump sue the BBC?
It’s certainly possible Trump could sue the BBC, given his past lawsuits against the media.
The president’s attorney, Alejandro Brito, sent a letter to the BBC on Monday calling for the outlet to fully retract the documentary about him, apologize and “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused”, according to the New York Times.
If not, Trump would sue the outlet for $1bn, the letter claimed.
How does this fit into his campaigns against the media in the US?
The legal threat isn’t the first Trump has made over editing of footage, a standard practice for broadcast outlets.
He sued CBS over an episode of 60 Minutes, where he claimed an interview with Kamala Harris was edited in a way that showed the outlet was biased against him. The broadcaster struck a deal with Trump to pay $16m to his presidential library to settle the lawsuit, a capitulation that undermined media independence.
He also settled a suit he brought against ABC News over how George Stephanopoulos described his sexual assault of writer E Jean Carroll. And he sued the Des Moines Register because he didn’t agree with the projections of a poll made in the state.
