Author and historian Rutger Bregman has said “the irony could not be bigger” as he accused the BBC of censoring a sentence about Donald Trump in a lecture he gave.
Dutch academic Bregman said the corporation removed a line from the broadcast of his Reith Lecture, titled A Time Of Monsters, in which he described Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history”.
It comes in the wake of controversy at the corporation after the US president threatened the BBC with a billion-dollar lawsuit over an edit that spliced parts of his 6 January 2021 speech together in a Panorama episode from 2024.
The BBC said it removed the sentence from the lecture “on legal advice”.
However Bregman said the sentence “wasn’t a baseless accusation”.
Bregman, author of Utopia For Realists, said: “I find it hard to express how shocked I am at the BBC’s decision.”
“Last Wednesday, I was told the sentence was being discussed with US lawyers and at the highest levels inside the BBC.
“For days, they couldn’t give me an answer. Yesterday they finally did, and the irony could not be bigger, because this lecture … is exactly about the cowardice of today’s elites, about universities, corporations, and yes, media networks, bending the knee to authoritarianism.”
I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1 pic.twitter.com/Z0oRPqX7RW
— Rutger Bregman (@rcbregman) November 25, 2025Bregman, 37, delivered his lecture in full to a live audience in London last month and the BBC aired its edited recording of the lecture at 9am on Tuesday on Radio 4.
He said the annual Reith Lectures, which have been going for more than 75 years, are about “free expression” and that this censorship “should concern everyone”.
Bregman also said the removed sentence was “defensible and plausible” and cited a major investigation from the New Yorker, published in August, which said “the notion that Trump is making colossal sums off the presidency has become commonplace” and offered a breakdown of estimated personal gains.
Bregman added: “This decision by the leadership of the BBC is very serious. It isn’t even about me. It’s about something much bigger.
“When institutions start censoring themselves because they’re scared of those in power, that is the moment we all need to pay attention.
“Democracies don’t collapse overnight. They gradually erode in acts of fear.”
The Reith Lectures are named after the BBC’s first director-general, Lord Reith, and sees the corporation invite a leading figure to deliver a series of lectures on radio about significant issues of the day.
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Previous Reith lecturers have included theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, Wolf Hall author Dame Hilary Mantel and the “father of the atomic bomb” J Robert Oppenheimer.
A BBC spokesperson said: “All of our programmes are required to comply with the BBC’s editorial guidelines, and we made the decision to remove one sentence from the lecture on legal advice.”
It comes after BBC board members were questioned about impartiality by MPs on Monday after BBC chair Samir Shah admitted the edited speech, given by Mr Trump ahead of the disorder at the US Capitol in 2021, gave “the impression of a direct call for violent action”.
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