It seems that, however much one tries, one cannot stop President Donald J. Trump from being in the news. It is good copy and, more importantly, he seems to revel in such publicity. Even during the interregnum between his first stint as president and the current one, in which he is hardly in any quandary about dealing with a variety of criticisms of his entire career and personal conduct. As of this writing, he has been having to pay $20.5 million for his suit against the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that has resulted in the quitting from their jobs of the BBC boss and head of news almost as soon as the news broke.
The BBC, which began as a company created by a consortium of wireless operators in 1922 and later became a public corporation in 1927 that operated under a royal charter, rapidly became, and has continued to remain, an organisation that is a trusted body of news dissemination and analysis.
And then this occurred. The BBC boss, Tim Davie (who has led the organisation since 2020) and the CEO of BBC News, Deborah Turness, resigned from their respective high positions following criticisms of the editing of a Trump documentary. What, indeed, is significant, if not startling (for those who are aware of the president’s tantrums, including in public, when confronted by negative images of himself and by clearly political commentaries about himself and his veracity).
The US president has threatened legal action against the BBC for its editing of a speech he had made in 2021 on the day his supporters overran Washington, D.C., which the BBC admitted was an error of judgment. And then came the rub. The president’s lawyers jumped into action, demanding that the news organisation retract its documentary by Friday or face a lawsuit of no less than $1 billion. Trump has, even when not wearing the presidential mantle, gone for large sums like this for wrongs purportedly done against him.
His lawyers also demanded that the BBC issue an apology and (always crucial) compensate the president for, in their view, “overwhelming reputational and financial harm.” Furthermore, looking for even the smallest positive action/negative outcome, the lawyers complained that the news organisation also spliced together several video excerpts from the president’s speech, thereby creating the impression that he had incited the January 6, 2021 riot- which, they complained, was “false and defamatory.”
Furthermore, in another example of willful negligence, the BBC also left out parts of the speech in which the president had exhorted his supporters to march “peacefully and patriotically” (whatever this translates to). The current chairperson of the BBC, Samir Shah, while apologising for the footage editing, rejected accusations about “reputational bias in the reporting.” We will just have to wait to see what else could come out of the episode. And Trump has not raised hell over the issue, aside from the financial threats and covenant to lawyers. Hopefully, the hullabaloo will die down soon and things can move on (the BBC is functioning as usual and Trump is coming up with trenchant and/or pleasant remarks of his own).
The US has just come out of the longest shutdown of its government in its history (on Trump’s watch, of course), and the President seems to be strangely subdued. Maybe his financial woes are easing, or problems arising out of the situation with the BBC are being resolved amicably, or more geopolitical issues are requiring more of his time. And these issues are sensitive. They have to be settled with a minimum of bad blood. It seems that a lot of global issues have been heaped upon him, and it is quite possible that he might be in a quandary regarding how to tackle the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi. Juggling two very wily customers in the landscape of high geopolitics, one of these shifts is that he has tightened ties and support for Syria- allowing fruitful talks with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa. The landscape in the Middle East has been changing markedly, particularly since the Gaza conflict between Israel and Hamas (itself a tough problem to solve) that still has some ways to go. In the meantime, one almost pities the duo of President Putin and Xi Jinping maneuvering for advantage on the geopolitical front. And Trump is waiting to see where they go. One can expect a lot of policy maneuverings of these three men plus a few more over the next few years to get a clearer picture of what is forthcoming.
P.S. Just as this write-up was completed, the news flashed that BBC has apologised to Trump for the guilty editing, but has categorically stated that it will not pay anything of the money that the U.S. President had asked for. And Trump has declared that he will seek monetary compensation.
TOUCHE!!!
The writer is MALD (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy) and PhD (Boston University)
