Jan. 6, 2021, is likely a day that will haunt Donald Trump for the rest of his life.
His detractors, and some of his supporters, will hold the events of that day against him for as long as he is on the political scene.
So, there is no need to make the situation worse by deceptively editing clips of what he said to supporters, but that is what a new report on the BBC has exposed.
I have never hidden my disgust for what happened on that fateful day, nor have I ever hidden my belief that Trump should never have been at the rally in the first place, considering the chatter at the time.
I was also not happy with the passive-aggressive posts sent out on social media by Trump amid the events of the day, which continued to get people fired up while at the same time asking everyone to go home.
For instance, one of the posts from Trump that became the focus of allegations later made against him stated, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
That post was sent even though a close adviser recommended that Trump not send it because he knew that its opening words, “these are the things and events that happen…' would have the media and Democrats saying that the unrest is what Trump wanted, and he was right.
The riot that unfolded became the subject of a House subcommittee convened by Nancy Pelosi. Still, by all appearances, her panel was a partisan group of lawmakers who were more interested in taking down Trump than they were in doing anything else.
There were two Republicans on the committee, but they were both anti-Trumpers who were hand-picked by Pelosi, not by the Republican House leader, who, at the time, was Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
It was posts like the one above that led to the committee saying that Trump “lit the fire” that resulted in the riot at the Capitol that day.
I say all this not to take a shot at Trump, but rather to say the situation was already bad for the president on this front, so there was no need for anyone to invent news to make it worse, but that is what appears to have happened at the BBC.
A report broke this week of a video that was released by the BBC before the last presidential election that included purposely edited footage from Jan. 6 to make it sound as though Trump had ordered those attending his rally to riot at the Capitol
Michael Prescott, former independent external adviser to the broadcaster’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC), stated, “Examining the charge that Trump had incited protesters to storm Capitol Hill, it turned out that Panorama had spliced together two clips from separate parts of his speech. This created the impression that Trump said something he did not and, in doing so, materially misled viewers.”
Here is the video in question…
🔴 EXCLUSIVE: The BBC is accused of editing a Trump speech to make him seem to back the Capitol riot.
A whistleblower memo says Panorama “completely misled” viewers by cutting key lines
Watch @gordonrayner’s full breakdown ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/A6nngI44Ll
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) November 3, 2025
The Conservative Party in Britain is now demanding action because the BBC is funded by a fee that is charged to everyone watching broadcast television in the country. But, much like NPR and PBS here in the United States, the question then becomes whether the enterprise should receive that funding since it is purposely misleading viewers. As I noted, the day in question was bad enough, so we don’t need so-called legitimate media outlets purposely and falsely misleading viewers about what happened. I would not be surprised in the least to see Trump or someone on his behalf take legal action against the outlet.
