By Eniola Amadu
Reform UK has withdrawn from a BBC documentary about the party following a dispute regarding the broadcaster’s handling of a Donald Trump speech.
The film, which was planned to be titled The Rise of Reform and was intended to be hosted by Laura Kuenssberg, was in production by the independent company October Films.
The President of the United States mentioned that BBC had “defrauded the public” and that he had the right to sue the company over the edited speech.
The edited Trump’s speech portrays the President encouraging violence prior to the attack on the US capital on January 6, 2021.
In a memo released, members of the Reform party have been warned against participating in the documentary which was to be aired in January, as a result of disinformation contained in Trump’s speech.
The memo reads: “We want to be clear that October Films have always conducted themselves professionally, and there is no suggestion from our side that they would maliciously misrepresent Reform UK.
“However, following the Panorama documentary the trust has been lost, and both BBC and the production company will have to do a lot of hard work to regain that trust.”
During an interview with Fox News, Trump said he plans to begin a billion-dollar legal action against the BBC.
“I think I have an obligation to do it, you can’t allow people to do that. I guess I have to. They defrauded the public and they’ve admitted it. This is within one of our great allies, supposedly our great ally.”
Expressing his frustration over the edits he said: “That’s a pretty sad event. They actually changed my January 6 speech, which was a beautiful speech, which was a very calming speech, and they made it sound radical.
“They showed me the results of how they butchered it up. It was very dishonest and the head man quit and a lot of the other people quit.”
A formal legal notice has been issued on behalf of the US President demanding that “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements” be withdrawn immediately.
Failure to comply will give Trump no option than to “enforce his legal and equitable rights, all of which are expressly reserved and are not waived, including by filing legal action for no less than 1,000,000,000 dollars in damages”.
