Campaign group 38 Degrees delivered the complaint after more than 65,000 people signed a petition demanding an investigation into whether the interview broke impartiality rules
GB News’ fawning interview with Donald Trump should be investigated by Ofcom, campaigners said today as they submitted an official complaint to the broadcast regulator. Campaign group 38 Degrees delivered the complaint after more than 65,000 people signed a petition demanding an investigation into whether the interview broke impartiality rules.
During her interview with the US President, critics say she failed to challenge him after he said climate change was a “hoax.” He also branded immigrants “scum” and made unfounded claims about crime in London.
“Tens of thousands of Brits have told us over the past few weeks that they think this Donald Trump interview was one-sided and want it investigated,” Matthew McGregor, CEO of 38 Degrees said. “It’s simply not good enough to allow an interviewee to call climate change “a hoax” and immigrants “scum” unchallenged – even if he is the most powerful person in the world.
“Broadcasters have a duty to ensure they don’t spread false information and we’re not afraid of pointing out when standards fall short of that, whoever it is.” During a lengthy attack on London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan, Trump claimed “Look at the crime you have in London. My mother loved London, she loved the city. She’d always talk about how that was a different London than what you have today. Today you have people being stabbed in the ass or worse.”
In reality, violent crimes leading to injury have fallen in every borough in the capital over the past year.
Of Sir Sadiq, Trump said: “Terrible. Terrible, Mayor. And as an example, you know, I was a high ranking officer, sort of always. Or a President, even as a civilian. You know, he was a respected person. He treated me very badly. I said, who is that guy? He’s a terrible Mayor.”
When asked about renewable energy, Trump said: “When they talk about the climate, it’s the whole thing is a hoax. They used to say it was started by other countries to cause problems, and they used to call it global warming. But that didn’t work because they started it started getting colder. They even called it many years ago global cooling. But those things don’t work. So now they call it climate change, because with climate change you can’t lose. It’s the whole thing is a hoax and your country, among others but your country is one of the worst.”
And in a message to European leaders, Trump branded immigrants “scum”.
“Your immigration is going to destroy you if you get people from the wrong people,” he said. “In our case, we had people coming in from jails, from mental institutions, from the drug dealers and some of the worst scum, and we’re getting them out and we’ve got a lot of them out.”