Starmer urged to stand up for BBC against Trump’s ‘outrageous’ $10bn lawsuit – UK politics live

Ed Davey says prime minister must make it clear lawsuit is ‘unacceptable’ as US president quotes Badenoch to back ‘fake news’ claim

Donald Trump may end up getting a settlement worth around $10m from the BBC, a friend of the president has said.

In an interview on the Today programme, Christopher Ruddy, who has known Trump for years and who runs the rightwing media company Newsmax, said that, although the BBC would have a strong defence under US law, it would also have big incentives to settle. He explained:

When an American case like this goes forward, the court usually gives the plaintiff, in this case it’s the president, very significant powers of discovery. And they’ll get emails and conversations and private things that were said by BBC executives about him, about his campaign, that may not be very flattering and may have shown an intent to harm him in the production of this.

I’m not seeing that will happen. I’m saying it could happen.

[Trump] is obviously not going to get $5bn. If I was looking into a crystal ball, I might say this case would settle probably around $10m.

The cost of litigation for the BBC to go through a case like this in the United States with attorneys would be probably about $50m to $100m. And the president has an excellent attorney well known in defamation, Alex Brito of Miami. He’s a very serious legal contender. These things are usually ugly. And that’s usually why they settle … I’m sure the BBC has enough money to cover a settlement of that size.

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.

Remarked Truss: “[The BBC] is a huge problem. They’ve lied, they’ve cheated, they’ve fiddled with footage, especially in the case of President Trump, but also covering up what’s happening in Britain whether it’s mass migration, whether it’s our economic problems, they are always biased towards the left … .” She was also asked whether the BBC’s tepid apology was sufficient, and responded: “No I don’t, because they keep doing it again and again. They have painted a completely false picture of President Trump in Britain over a number of years, they’vedone the same thing about conservatives in our country … .” Lamenting the BBC’s lost status as a “paragon” of journalism, she remarked that the BBC’s “fake news” has caused immense harm to the public for a long time.