The BBC would be well advised to strongly resist Donald Trump’s intimidation - Andy Brown

Mr Trump reflected carefully on their clear and explicit list of lies and decided that instead of changing his behaviour he would prefer to launch a $3.78bn lawsuit against them to discourage the Washington Post from ever publishing anything similar again.

Such attacks on anyone who dares to report accurately on his loose relationship with the truth come fast and furious. He has sued the Chicago Tribune, CNN, ABC, CBS Paramount, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and publisher Simon and Schuster.

He has lost several of these cases and never won anything remotely like the silly sums he claims in damages. Yet the organisations in question have to think long and hard about the legal costs and have sometimes chosen to pay up rather than face long battles in court. That results in the press becoming extremely careful about anything they publish. Whilst he remains free to make sloppy and wildly exaggerated claims on a daily basis.

This intimidation of freedom of speech isn’t restricted to the press. Scientific and academic thought is also being subject to fierce attacks whilst dangerously inaccurate and unevidenced ideas about vaccines are freely promoted by his own Secretary of State for Health. Before being casually repeated by Trump.

Harvard University was top of the list of 60 universities which received letters from the Trump administration telling them to change what their students learned about the conflict in Gaza.

The head of the taskforce that Trump appointed said this. “We’re going to bankrupt these universities. We’re going to take away every single federal dollar”. “If these universities do not play ball, lawyer up, because the federal government is coming after you.”

There are, of course, a wide range of views about what has happened in Gaza. Places of education are meant to explore them and subject them to the rigours of academic debate.

The idea that a university will be pushed into bankruptcy if it allows discussion of a different view to the one promoted by the government belongs in North Korea, not in a country with freedom of thought.

Then we have the Epstein files. Before the election Donald Trump promised publication because he claimed it would reveal corruption amongst Democrats. Once safely in office he switched to blocking publication in case they revealed some of his own sleazy behaviour. Then caved in under extreme pressure and switched to denying that any of his frequent dealings with Epstein were anything but entirely innocent.

In case anyone has forgotten this is the politician who was recorded telling friends in the locker room that “when you are a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the…”

Any other politician who displayed Donald Trump’s behaviour around women would have seen their career finished off.

A similar level of utter hypocrisy has been in evidence in Trump’s complaints about the BBC manipulating the facts about the 2020 election. His own Vice President has said clearly in public that Donald Trump asked him to overturn the official result of that election by disallowing inconvenient votes and discovering extra ones.

Yet somehow when Panorama reported that fact the public are now expected to discount every word of truth in their report because they cut out a lot of rambling and foolishly put two parts of his speech together.

Those who stormed Congress after listening to the speech in question participated in a riot which killed people working to protect national security. The rioters got very quickly pardoned when Trump got back into office. Which clearly indicates that he thought they had done no wrong.

So the BBC would be well advised to strongly resist intimidation. Sir Keir Starmer needs to tell Donald Trump that the British government will not recognise the ruling of a Florida-based show trial held outside British jurisdiction.

It would be fascinating to find out what a genuinely fair court hearing would make of Donald Trump’s behaviour on the day Congress was stormed. I rather suspect that any British court will conclude that it is extremely hard to damage the reputation of Donald J Trump.

Unfortunately the same isn’t true of the courts in Florida. Because they can no longer be trusted to be free and fair.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley.