The White House has criticised the BBC for commissioning Dutch author Rutger Bregman, a fierce critic of President Donald Trump, to deliver its flagship annual Reith lectures
22:59, 15 Nov 2025Updated 14:30, 16 Nov 2025
The row between Donald Trump and the BBC appears to have worsened as the White House again accused the corporation of being biased in their criticism of the American president. It was claimed tonight that the broadcaster invited a fierce Trump critic to deliver its flagship annual lectures.
Last weekend, BBC Director-General Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness quit over accusations of bias and misleading editing of a speech Trump delivered on January 6, 2021, before a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington. The hour-long documentary was broadcast as part of the BBC's Panorama series days before the 2024 US presidential election.
It put 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.
On Monday, BBC chairman Samir Shah apologised to Trump for the "error of judgement" and said the broadcaster accepted "that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action."
In a further escalation of tensions, the BBC has now been further criticised for commissioning Dutch author Rutger Bregman, a fierce critic of Trump, to deliver its flagship annual Reith lectures. Reports in the Mail suggest the author used the events to draw parallels between Trump's America and the rise of fascism in the 1930s.
In a statement to the newspaper, White House communications director Steven Cheung criticised the BBC saying: "The BBC has been caught red-handed doctoring President Trump's remarks on multiple occasions so it's no surprise that they have commissioned a rabid anti-Trump individual to deliver a lecture." Mr Bregman's lectures, recorded in London, Liverpool, Edinburgh and the US last month, are due to air on Radio 4 from November 25.
The BBC said in a statement shared with The Mirror: "The Reith Lectures have a long tradition of showcasing the leading thinkers from across the political spectrum. The views expressed are always those of the speaker, not the BBC, and they are discussed and challenged after the lecture."
In response to the story, Mr Bregman wrote on X: "Great to see that the @WhiteHouse and the @DailyMail are as excited by the upcoming publication of my Reith Lectures as I am. The lectures are about the decadence, immorality and unseriousness of today's elites, on both the left and the right. I quote Antonio Gramsci: 'The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.'
"To be honest, I spend most of my time dunking on my 'own' side. But of course I also address the authoritarian currents in the US: masked men dragging people into vans, people like Curtis Yarvin who openly argue for dismantling democracy, the resurgence of neo-Nazism etc. Yet the lectures are ultimately hopeful, about how moments like this can bring movements of moral renewal.
"One of my favorite case studies is the rise of British abolitionism in the late 18th century – one of the greatest movements for human rights this world has ever seen. It emerged in a similarly decadent age. Anyway, stay tuned for the first lecture, which will be published on Nov 25 on @BBCRadio4!"
Despite apologising to Trump on Thursday, the BBC said it had not defamed him, rejecting the basis for his lawsuit threat. The BBC said Mr Shah sent a personal letter to the White House saying that he and the corporation were sorry for the edit, but added there are no plans to rebroadcast the documentary that sparked the row.
"We accept that our edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action," the BBC wrote in a retraction. Trump's lawyer had sent the BBC a letter demanding an apology and threatened to file a $1 billion lawsuit for the harm the documentary caused him.
It had set a Friday deadline for the BBC to respond. While the BBC statement didn't respond to Trump's demand that he be compensated for "overwhelming financial and reputational harm," the headline on its news story about the apology said it refused to pay compensation.