The complaint filed yesterday in the Southern District of Florida states:
‘In the BBC Panorama documentary titled “Trump: A Second Chance”… first broadcast on October 28,2024, the BBC intentionally and maliciously sought to fully mislead its viewers around the world by splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021…. The Panorama Documentary deliberately omitted another critical part of the Speech in such a manner as to intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said. The Panorama Documentary falsely depicted President Trump telling supporters: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”…
President Trump never uttered this sequence of words. This fabricated depiction of President Trump during the Speech was false, deceptive, and defamatory given that President Trump’s actual and full remarks during the Speech were (a) “Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down. Anyone you want but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressman and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them” (Remarks made on January 6, 2021, 12:12p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 14:52 into the Speech), and then, much later, (b) “[B]ut I said ‘Something’s wrong here, Something’s really wrong, can’t have happened.’ And we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” (Remarks made on January 6, 2021 at 1:07 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 69:30 into the Speech).
“Moreover, the BBC purposefully omitted President Trump stating, less than one minute after urging supporters to cheer for their senators and congressmen, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard” (Remarks made on January 6, 2021, 12:13 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, 15:48 into the Speech).”
Yesterday, announcing the action, the President said in part, “They had me saying things that I never said coming out. I guess they used AI or something. So we’ll be bringing that lawsuit. A lot of people were asking, ‘When are you bringing that lawsuit?’ Even the media can’t believe that one. They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with January 6 that I didn’t say and the beautiful words that I said … talking about patriotism and all of the good things that I said, they didn’t say that but they put terrible words. They actually have me speaking with words that I never said and they got caught because I believe somebody at BBC said, ‘This is so bad, it has to be reported.’ That’s called fake news.”
Observations:
1. Good. I assumed this was coming. The BBC’s deliberate lie was substantive and immediately caused a shake-up at the BBC, which has long been a persistent anti-Trump propaganda tool.
2. I had a frustrating discussion yesterday with a Trump-Deranged lawyer who termed Trump’s regular, and usually justified, condemnation of the news media a threat to the First Amendment. No, the trust that the American public should be able to have for journalism has been thoroughly abused and weaponized by unethical practitioners, and that poses an existential threat to democracy meaningfully participated in by an informed public…and that is a threat to all our rights, including freedom of speech.
3. I once believed in the wisdom of New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark case based on a presumption of good will and professionalism by journalists. That presumption is no longer rational. The case should be over-turned.
4. Note that the London Times, in the link above, puts quotes around “fake news.” When a news organization reports a false version of what an American President said, that is fake news by definition. The quote marks themselves are fake news.
5. Every journalist or pundit that attempts to take the BBC’s side in this, or the side of ABC News when its talking head repeatedly said that Trump had been convicted of rape, or CBS News and “60 Minutes,” which attempted election interference by trying to edit typical empty blather by Kamala Harris so she didn’t sound like the incoherent fool that she is, reveals themselves as complicit in an industry-wide plot to undermine the President of the United States, and thus our government.
6. When I wrote yesterday that the many missions of the Trump Administration are too important for the President to jeopardize with thoughtless outbursts like his diatribe against Rob Reiner after the director had his throat slit by his own son, this is one of those missions, perhaps the most crucial one. Our news media must be forced to play the crucial role in our system that the Founders intended it to, because democracy requires an informed populace. Deliberate fake news must not be tolerated. Opinion, marked clearly as such? Fine: immune from consequences. Mistakes made in good faith? Fine, as long as they are corrected in a timely fashion. Warping, inventing or omitting facts has got to stop, and the only way it will stop is if the leaders of the news industry acknowledge that these practices are wrong. The only way they will acknowledge that is if there are tangible consequences.
***
Later today, if I regain control of my schedule, I will fisk a Trump Deranged substack that epitomizes the Axis lie that Trump is the threat to freedom of speech rather than the legions of totalitarianism that he opposes, albeit in frequently clumsy fashion.
Ethics Alarms 
the Axis lie that Trump is the threat to freedom of speech rather than the legions of totalitarianism that he opposes
They say white is black, up is down, and it seems to carry the day. What’s this name for this rhetorical trick?
Orwellianism.
Bingo!
In the State of Wisconsin, the Governor has sweeping line item veto powers that allow legislation to be literally rewritten to completely change the intent. This veto power allows the Governor to strike words so that the leftover words end up to create legislation that was entirely different than what was submitted to the office. I’m relatively certain that this is intentionally done in conjunction with a partisan majority that cannot override the veto, it’s preplanned to insert words that can be used in this effort. This extremely selective cherry picking veto power has been appropriately nicknamed “Frankensteining”.
I think the anti-conservative, anti-Trump, anti-American very selective cherry picking tactic being used by the political left’s media to lie, yes lie, about those on the political right should be tarred as “Frankensteining” or “Frankensteined Fake News”.
Speaking of lying tactics coming from the political left; how about the way they have bastardized words to smear those they disagree with. A really good example is how the political left is using of the word “pedo” (aka pedophile) to publicly smear Trump. You can see this all over leftist protest signs and hear it in interviews from leftists and it’s promoted by media sources. The word pedophile is literally defined as “sexual attraction towards prepubescent children” and the left is intentionally using it to malicious defame anyone politically to the right of the extreme totalitarian Attila the Hun if they have been accused of anything related to sex with older teenaged females, which are physically beyond their “prepubescent” years. This bastardization of words by the left is very intentional and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s malicious defamation (intentionally making false statements that harm someone’s reputation). When are the targets of this kind of intentional defamation going to take these leftist liars to task and destroy their lives using defamation laws?
I can’t say this enough…
Ironically, the Left often goes to lengths to differentiate pedophilia from pederasty in order to minimize the sexual abuse of minors who are teenagers. Tarring Trump as a pedophile when Epstein’s girls were teenagers is a deliberate attempt to make his association with Epstein darker than it was, especially considering there is no evidence he was a client at all.
By definition; even Epstein cannot be considered a “pedophile“, he certainly can be dumped into the “Ephebophilea” category, a sexual sleezebag, and piece of shit.
“Mistakes made in good faith? Fine, as long as they are corrected in a timely fashion.”
Let’s add the caveat that to be considered “in good faith”, such mistakes must also be part of a pattern where they are not always consistently to the benefit of one party over the other.
The news media has been the biggest Dishonest Waiter in history.
–Dwayne
Wrong. The “quote marks” (actually quotation marks) are carrying out precisely the same function that they do when I put them around “quote marks” itself: marking off a usage that is not, or at any rate not yet, in general use. When I myself, right here, put them around “fake news”, it is not asserting that there is no such phenomenon but rather that the term is a neologism – very possibly one of Trump’s. Of course, U.S. dialect is different from the King’s English, but the Times uses the latter, by and large (there is no such newspaper as “the London Times” – have a look at its masthead).
None of this is quibbling. It is just pointing out that you can only get your own interpretation of all this by using your own terminology and meanings, and that – in this case – others are at work.
What’s at all “marking off a usage that is not, or at any rate not yet, in general use”? It was put in quotes by dishonest journalists when Trump started using it excessively, but this is “news that is fake,” ergo fake news. “Fake news” is what papers use to suggest that what in fact is accurate is being called fake news. In this case, as in many others, fake news is self explanatory and 100% accurate as a description.. No quotes necessary or appropriate.