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Fake news indeed! The British Daily Telegraph has reported that the BBC deceptively edited a speech by Donald Trump to make it look like the President had ordered his supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The footage was aired as part of the BBC documentary Trump: A Second Chance? in October 2024. The ruse involved splicing together two statements made by Trump over an hour apart. This made it seem like Trump had said that “We’re gonna walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be with you and we fight. We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.”
In fact, “walk down to the Capitol had actually been followed by “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Which reminds Cockburn of how removing a comma can turn “Let’s eat, Grandma” into “Let’s eat Grandma.”
This is more than a piece of creative editing. If you recall, much of the legal case against Trump turned on what the true meaning of “fight like hell” was – was this a figurative “fight” in the standard Kamala/Hillary sense, or was it a literal command to seize control of the delegate count taking place at the Capitol? This was a malicious bit of chicanery at a critical moment.
And yet this is a curiously analogue way to unperson someone – like when the Soviets used to crudely edit people out of photographs if they fell foul of Stalin. It’s like if Trump’s opponents had relied on celebrities from TV and film to attack him. Oh wait…
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