UK's Starmer refuses to say whether he will urge Trump to drop his $1 billion BBC threat

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LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer refused to say Wednesday whether he would urge U.S. President Donald Trump to drop his threat to sue the BBC for $1 billion over the broadcaster's edit of a speech he made after losing the 2020 presidential election.

During his weekly question and answer session in the House of Commons, Starmer was asked by Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, whether he would intervene in the dispute between Trump and the British public broadcaster, and to rule out the idea that the British taxpayers who fund the BBC would have to hand over money to the U.S. president.

Instead of responding directly, Starmer reiterated the government's line since BBC Director-General Tim Davie announced his resignation on Sunday because of the scandal.

“I believe in a strong and independent BBC,” he said. “Some would rather BBC didn’t exist, I’m not one of them.”

However, he added that “where mistakes are made, they do need to get their house in order.”

In an interview that aired Tuesday on Fox News, Trump said he intended to go through with his threat to sue the BBC, a century-old institution under growing pressure in an era of polarized politics and changing media viewing habits.

“I guess I have to," he said. “Because I think they defrauded the public and they’ve admitted it.”

The president’s lawyer, Alejandro Brito, sent the threat to the BBC over the way a documentary edited his Jan. 6, 2021, speech before a mob of his followers stormed the U.S. Capitol. The letter demanded an apology to the president and a “full and fair” retraction of the documentary along with other “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading or inflammatory statements” about Trump.

If the BBC does not comply with the demands by 5 p.m. EST Friday, then Trump will enforce his legal rights, the letter said.

The BBC has said it will “respond directly in due course” to the letter.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that “the president’s external legal counsel has filed a lawsuit against the BBC. We expect that to continue. And whether they apologize or not is up to them.”

Trump and Starmer have a good relationship, Leavitt said, but likely disagree on whether the BBC is fair, with the president regarding it as “a leftist propaganda machine.”

The dispute was sparked by an edition of the BBC’s flagship current affairs series “Panorama,” titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” broadcast days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

The third-party production company that made the film spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.”

Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

BBC Chairman Samir Shah apologized Monday for the misleading edit that he said gave “the impression of a direct call for violent action.”

In addition to Davie's resignation, BBC news chief Deborah Turness quit Sunday, saying the scandal was damaging the BBC and "as the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, the buck stops with me.”

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Associated Press writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this story.