The clip at the center of the case runs 12 seconds. In it, Donald Trump appears to tell a crowd on January 6, 2021, that "we're going to walk down to the Capitol and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell." The two halves of that line were spoken nearly 55 minutes apart, according to the order a federal judge in Florida filed on Tuesday.
On November 10, 2026, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey T. Kuntz of the Southern District of Florida refused to dismiss President Trump's defamation claim against the British Broadcasting Corporation over that edit in its Panorama documentary, dismissed a second claim under Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, and ordered the BBC to answer the surviving count by December 1, 2026.
The case is Trump v. British Broadcasting Corp., No. 1:25-cv-25894. The ruling decides only whether the claim was properly pleaded. "Whether President Trump can prove these claims and establish he sustained damages at summary judgment or trial is left for another day," Kuntz wrote. The BBC has denied that the program defamed him.
What the order says about the edit
The documentary, "Trump: A Second Chance," aired on October 28, 2024, a week before the presidential election. Kuntz set out both passages of the speech as the amended complaint quotes them. In the first, Trump said "we're going to walk down to the Capitol and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women." The "fight like hell" line came almost an hour later. Less than a minute after that, he told the crowd they would be "marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
The judge leaned hard on the BBC's own apology. He quoted a letter from the BBC chairman, attached to the complaint as Exhibit K, saying the edit "gave the mistaken impression that you had made a direct call for violent action. That was an editorial error and it should not have happened."
The BBC's lawyers argued that editing a speech of about 70 minutes down to 12 seconds was ordinary work. Kuntz rejected that. "This was not trimming around the edges but creating something different than what was stated in the speech," he wrote. He also noted that the BBC had the full speech available for nearly three years before the documentary aired.
He separated this case from two other Trump suits in the same district that failed: the 2023 CNN case, which Judge Raag Singhal dismissed because the statements were opinion, and the Wall Street Journal case, which Judge Darrin Gayles dismissed on October 31, 2026, as we reported at the time. "Those cases involved a news entity reporting on a story. Here, the news entity created the story," Kuntz wrote.
Did Trump plead actual malice?
As a public figure, Trump must eventually prove actual malice, meaning the BBC knew the clip was false or recklessly disregarded whether it was. Kuntz found the complaint plausibly alleges it, for three reasons drawn from the pleadings: the 55-minute gap between the spliced passages, the chairman's apology, and earlier BBC episodes the complaint cites, including a 2022 Newsnight segment in which former White House official Mick Mulvaney told the program on air that its video "spliced together the presentation."
The order also takes up the timing of the apology. The BBC argued that its readiness to retract weighed against malice. Kuntz traced that idea to a 1977 case about a correction printed in the next day's Washington Post and wrote that "it cannot be said that a retraction the next day is in the same ballpark as a retraction over a year later, and only after being threatened with legal action." By our count, the BBC's apology on November 13, 2025, came 381 days after the broadcast and four days after Trump's lawyer wrote to the BBC threatening a $1 billion suit, as the BBC's own motion to dismiss recounts.
Two pages of the order criticize New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 decision that created the actual malice rule. Citing opinions by Justice Clarence Thomas, Kuntz wrote that "It cannot be said that Sullivan is grounded in the original meaning of the Constitution, at least not in any meaningful sense." He then applied it anyway: "Regardless, Sullivan remains good law and inferior courts are bound by vertical precedent."
Why a Florida court can hear a British broadcast
The BBC's strongest ground was jurisdiction. Its motion said the BBC aired the documentary only on its UK channels and the iPlayer streaming service, "never broadcast it in the U.S. and never even had rights to do so." It argued that the 34 Florida play starts Trump alleged came from ten users who got around geoblocking with VPNs, and that they amounted to 0.006 percent of the documentary's 570,000 successful requests. We checked that figure: 34 divided by 570,000 is 0.00596 percent.
Kuntz did not rest on those 34 plays. He found jurisdiction under the "tortious act" part of Florida's long-arm statute, section 48.193(1)(a)(2), because Trump lived in Florida and the program was accessible there. On due process, he pointed to allegations that the BBC planned the release around the U.S. election, filmed partly in Florida, and that producers sent viewing instructions to Americans, including a link to Rick Wilson, a Florida resident. "It seems contradictory that BBC would argue they prevented access while actively assisting American citizens to circumvent the preventative measures," Kuntz wrote. The BBC's motion had said those producers worked for October Films, a third party, and that nobody alleged any recipient actually watched.
Our count: what each side won
We went through the order section by section and counted each separate argument the BBC made and how the judge ruled on it. By our count the order resolves 16 BBC arguments. The BBC won five and lost 11.
On the defamation count, the BBC lost on actual harm, on opinion, and on four of its five actual malice points: the documentary as a whole, the edit itself, the omission of other parts of the speech, and the apology. It won one point, that failing to ask Trump for comment does not by itself show malice. "On this point, the Court agrees," the order says.
On the Florida trade practices count, the BBC lost its argument that a failed defamation claim takes the second claim down with it, but won its argument that a documentary is not "trade or commerce." That ended Count II.
On jurisdiction, the BBC won three of seven. The court found no general jurisdiction in Florida and no jurisdiction under two other long-arm provisions, three grounds Trump did not press in his response. The BBC lost on the tortious act provision, the Calder "effects test," minimum contacts, and fair play.
The five wins were real but narrow. Not one of them disposed of the defamation count.
How much is still at stake?
The original complaint, filed December 15, 2025, demanded "not less than $5,000,000,000" on each of its two counts, plus punitive damages. With Count II gone, the written demand falls from at least $10 billion to at least $5 billion. That complaint named three defendants, including two BBC Studios companies. The amended complaint the judge ruled on, filed August 10, 2026, is captioned against the BBC alone. Florida law also requires Trump to prove actual damages, the order says, since presumed damages are not available against media defendants.
Our timeline, with day counts from the broadcast
October 28, 2024: Panorama airs "Trump: A Second Chance." Day 0.
November 9, 2025: Trump's lawyer writes to the BBC threatening a $1 billion suit, per the BBC's motion. Day 377.
November 13, 2025: The BBC publishes a retraction and apologizes, day 381.
December 15, 2025: Complaint filed in Miami, day 413.
August 10, 2026: Amended complaint filed, day 651.
August 24, 2026: BBC moves to dismiss, day 665.
October 22, 2026: Magistrate Judge Enjolique Lett orders Trump to sit for a deposition by December 11, CBS News reported, day 724.
November 10, 2026: Kuntz rules, day 743, and 78 days after the motion was filed.
What the parties said
Trump called the ruling "A Huge Victory against Fake News BBC, a terrible abuser of the truth" on Truth Social, CBS News reported. A BBC spokesperson said: "We are surprised by this decision but respect the Court's authority and note the case will now proceed to the next stage."
Personal jurisdiction has decided other defamation fights this fall. In October a Delaware judge dropped Candace Owens personally from the Macrons' suit because the court had no jurisdiction over her, while letting the claims against her companies go on.
What to watch
The BBC's answer to Count I is due December 1, 2026, 21 days after the order. Trump's deposition deadline is December 11, and discovery was set to close December 18, CBS reported, unless the court extends those dates. Once discovery ends, the next big filings would be motions for summary judgment, where Trump would have to show evidence of actual malice and actual damages, not just plead them.
Two Taps News stories summarize reporting and the analysis discussed on Two Taps and Friends. They are not legal advice. Read our standards.
