OF CABBAGES AND KINGS | Why I Think That The Donald May Lose In Bid To Sue BBC For Billions | Farrukh Dhondy

“The moving finger types and as it hits

The computer keys it summons all our wits

To try composing some new deathless rhyme

But then, frustrated, pours a glass and quits!”

From Dew Anna Tales, by Bachchoo

President Donald Trump sends crack troops to Venezuela and kidnaps its President. He threatens Colombia, Mexico and Cuba with the same and Greenland with annexation.

With brute strength on his side and a renewed commitment to police and exploit the natural resources of “his hemisphere”, Orangeeboob will no doubt raise his popularity with Maggots.

The one battle I predict Strumpet will lose is his attempt to sue the BBC for $10 billion. Though it’ll be a blow to his ego, it won’t in any way affect his totally illegal foreign policy. But when his case against “Aunty” is dismissed, I and perhaps billions more will raise a glass.

The word “loser!” somehow springs to mind.

I’m not a betting person (now and then a tote Exacta for £1.80?). But I’m willing to stake a fiver on my conviction and I’ll tell you why:

The case of Orangeeboob versus the BBC arises from a documentary that the Beeb broadcast just before the 2024 Trumpistan elections. The Panorama documentary featured the speech which DoJo gave to his gathered followers on January 6, 2021, after losing the 2020 election and claimed that he was cheated.

His speech started with: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

Fifty minutes into his ramble to the belligerent-looking crowd, some wielding batons and wearing antler hats, he said: “And we fight. We fight like hell!”

The documentary edited the speech to say: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell!”

This edit caused the Beeb massive embarrassment when one of its own consultants reported “unfair editing”. It was only after this report was published that Trumpsicle announced his decision to sue. And that in a court in Florida.

The BBC was chastised in the right-wing British press, which has long wanted the corporation disenfranchised. They said this edit of the speech gave the impression that Orangeeboob had instigated his followers to attack the Capitol and cause the havoc they caused by pursuing vice-president Mike Pence, who refused to take steps to overturn the election result. The attack caused, according to reports, ten deaths -- six protesters and four policemen.

The media overkill about the BBC bias, with perhaps some government pressure, caused Tim Davie, the Beeb’s director-general, and Deborah Turness, its head of news, to resign.

The BBC apologised to Mr Trump but refused to acknowledge that he had any claim to damages. The lawsuit in Florida then followed.

To my mind, reading the Bigly Loser’s speech certainly did goad his mob to attack the Capitol. His “fight like hell” phrase didn’t mean “please distribute peppermints and daisy chains”.

Then the fact is that the showing of the documentary didn’t harm him in any way as he went on to win the presidency in 2024.

The strongest persuasion for me to bet on his losing the case arises from the fact that probably no one in Florida saw the documentary as it wasn’t transmitted in Trumpistan in any state, as the BBC will prove.

Gentle reader, I had a personal encounter with the number of viewers, or in my case readers, of a libel allegation. In the 1990s, when I was a commissioning editor at Channel 4 in the UK, the journalists Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ali, said they had evidence that Mother Teresa received funds from Haiti’s Papa Doc and Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. They also had testimony from British volunteer nurses who had joined Mother Teresa’s sanctuary and said she was only concerned with converting souls and had allowed several destitutes she took in to suffer and die as a result. The doc was made and broadcast.

Dilip Thakore, an acquaintance of mine, then wrote a nasty piece in Calcutta’s Sunday magazine attacking Hitchens and Ali and alleging that I, who had commissioned the doc, had defrauded the British government of two houses which I now owned and that I was only given my job at Channel 4 because I claimed to be a Ugandan refugee.

I don’t, and never did, own any houses, legitimately or through fraud, and I’ve never stepped foot in Uganda… And why would Channel 4 appoint anyone claiming to be a Ugandan refugee to a senior editorial position?

I didn’t bother, but Channel 4’s lawyers found that Sunday had several hundred British readers and sent a notice to the magazine saying that they would sue.

Sunday considered this, admitted that the article was libellous and untrue, and settled out of court for £10,000.

Our legal department gave me £6,000 out of this settlement and I promptly refurbished the kitchen in my house.

When I was next in India I encountered the editor of Sunday, Vir Sanghvi, and thanked him graciously for my new kitchen. He wasn’t pleased. I did the same to Aveek Sarkar, the owner of Sunday, when I encountered him in Delhi at some social occasion. He ignored my thanks and asked if I would write a regular column for Sunday. I said I didn’t think the editor would countenance even two polite words about anything from me.