In the year the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its break with the British crown, there is something almost painfully ironic about a broadcaster from the kingdom that once ruled us now being more willing to stand up to Donald Trump than much of the American establishment. But the irony isn’t really the story. The story is that the president filed a $10 billion lawsuit to punish the BBC, and in doing so, he may have handed the corporation a legal instrument to drag his children Ivanka and Donald Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, into a Miami courtroom to answer for what happened on Jan. 6.
The lawsuit was supposed to be another exercise in the familiar Trumpian playbook: File a claim, demand an astronomical sum, bury the target in legal expenses, force a humiliating settlement that gets marketed as a political win. That strategy has worked before. In 2024, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million after network anchor George Stephanopoulos inaccurately said Trump had been found liable for rape. Paramount later paid more than $24 million over CBS News’ handling of an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that took place during the 2024 presidential race. With that track record, Trump had every reason to expect the BBC to fold in the same way.
