As President Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt calls the BBC ‘fake news’ and encourages Americans to watch GB News instead, we publish this article from the current print and digital edition of Byline Times, which looks at how the Reform-supporting channel is now spreading anti-British, Pro-Trump content to American viewers across the Atlantic
GB News’ new US show is providing a regular platform for the claim that the UK needs to be ‘saved’ by Donald Trump’s America.
The Late Show Live launched on 22 September, broadcasting in the United States as well as on GB News’ UK channel and on YouTube.
Speaking at a party to mark the launch of GB News in the US in September, its co-owner Sir Paul Marshall is reported by Politico to have told the audience of ‘Make America Great Again’ allies and supporters: “We need you to come and save us. To rescue us … You are making America great again… We need to make Britain great again … We need as many as possible of you … to appear on our channel, to tell the story of what you’re doing to turn your country around.”
Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage, a GB News presenter, was the headline speaker at the party.
Judging by its first week of output, the new US show appears to be fulfilling Marshall’s wishes.
Hosted by Bev Turner and Ben Leo from Washington DC, The Late Show Live is also being shown – along with other GB News content – on Donald Trump’s streaming platform Truth+, as well as other pro-Trump networks.
The US launch raises questions about the media and political discourse GB News hopes to frame around the UK, from the perspective of American politics, and the extent to which such a project aims to help Farage’s party, which is leading UK polls.
The American launch party, held at Ned’s Club in Washington DC, was attended by 500 people “across US politics, American business, and the global media”, according to GB News – including 11 members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
Speakers included US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt – who gave “a huge shout-out to Nigel Farage”.
“You share the values this administration holds dear: free speech, that men cannot be women, secure borders – we don’t want illegal aliens invading our countries, we want to protect the integrity, democracy, and culture that make our countries two of the greatest countries in the history of the world,” Leavitt said.
Farage told the audience that GB News had been “prepared to take on the wokery, the left-wingism, the negativity, the managed decline” and “to have a news channel that believes that we can make Britain great again is so important”.
Marshall – who also owns the Spectator magazine and the UnHerd site – told the crowd that “every TV channel was progressive and the BBC was a state behemoth distorting the entire landscape” when GB News was launched four years ago.
“You are an inspiration,” he went on. “The United States has an incredibly important role to play in the future of Britain. You provide us with hope and inspiration. We want to shine a light on what’s happening here. President Trump is a controversial figure, particularly in Europe. There are many naysayers. But there are many others who want to hear and understand what you’re doing in this country.”
According to Politico, Marshall was “close to tears” as he quoted Churchill, branding Trump and his supporters “the new world” which would replace the “old” one.
The outlet reported that speakers at the party “discussed a budding transatlantic alliance that could help propel Farage into Downing Street”.
Alan McCormick, GB News’ Chairman, told attendees that “Britain has been infected by a mind virus that sees no value in place, in family, in community, in love of country and these views have been reinforced by an establishment media who have suppressed any alternative viewpoints”.
Michael Booker, Editorial Director of GB News, claimed that “what happens in the USA is having huge consequences, both socially and economically, for the people of Britain”.
“The world’s biggest political story is playing out in Washington, and its impact is being felt daily in towns and cities across Britain … We’ve seen, time and again, this year that a decision made on one day in Washington DC is felt the next day in Washington, Tyne and Wear,” he said.
GB News is broadcast in the UK on streaming channels regulated by broadcast regulator Ofcom, including the new US show, which airs on UK television from midnight until 2am every day.
An Ofcom spokesperson said it had an “ongoing duty to be satisfied, as the independent UK broadcasting regulator, that broadcast licensees remain fit and proper to hold their licences” and that it kept “all licensees under review”.
For Richard Wilson, co-founder of the Stop Funding Hate campaign group, GB News’ “relentless promotion” of Trump’s Government through this new show “makes a mockery of the channel’s claim to be a champion of free speech”.
“Just at the moment that Trump is stepping up his attacks on freedom of expression in the United States, this toxic channel is doubling-down on its effort to ingratiate itself with the MAGA movement – and import the Trump playbook to Britain,” he added.
Polls indicate that about 70% of Brits now have a negative view of America’s President – with Wilson saying this demonstrates “how out of touch GB News is with the UK public”.
Night One: A Love-In for Trump
Hosts Bev Turner and Ben Leo have both rejected man-made climate change, espoused anti-vaccine views, and appeared to cast doubt on the Coronavirus pandemic being real.
Content from the inaugural US show included frequent praise for Donald Trump and his MAGA backers by the GB News hosts and their guests – as well as praise for GB News from MAGA figures.
Turner’s heavily pro-Trump commentary has previously included her saying that she believes “we’ve got such amazingly exciting times ahead” under the President, and on another occasion, “where Trump goes, hopefully the UK will follow”.
Leo has also praised Trump, previously called the climate crisis a “climate scam”, and frequently uses far-right tropes about a so-called immigrant invasion.
He has previously referred to pro-immigration politicians as “traitors” and said of the US President: “I think President Trump, in decades to come, will be remembered as one of the greatest US presidents in living history. He has shifted the Overton window on everything from mass deportations, from the trans debate, take your pick … I think his face should be carved into Mount Rushmore.”
The first programme featured an exclusive interview with senior Trump advisor, former Fox News anchor and 2020 election result-denier Kari Lake, who – along with Leo – repeatedly castigated the UK on immigration, free speech, and the BBC licence fee, while calling for Nigel Farage to become the next Prime Minister.
Subsequent shows cemented GB News’ apparent Trumpian worldview.
Night Two: Paracetamol Panic
On its second airing, Turner backed Donald Trump’s announcement urging pregnant women to stop taking tylenol – the US name for paracetamol – claiming, without firm evidence, that it caused autism.
She said: “I just find it astonishing when Wes Streeting comes out as our Health Secretary the morning after and just says this is wrong, as though he has evidence … I imagine he hasn’t even read their report by the time he went on breakfast telly this morning.”
She claimed that doctors may now recommend taking paracetamol to people on the basis that they do not like Trump, saying: “The trouble is, if people go into the doctors and the doctors hate Donald Trump and they say ‘I’m pregnant, should I take paracetamol?’ The doctors are going to say, yeah, take paracetamol, don’t listen to that Donald Trump.”
She added: “Social media is literally awash with people, pregnant women today on TikTok … it blows my mind, necking tylenol just to say ‘you take this, Donald Trump’ as they put tylenol down their gullet with their pregnant bump.
“What’s wrong with those women? They [have] completely lost their mind. They are that politically enraged by Donald Trump that they would risk the health of their baby rather than listen to people who have their best interests at heart.”
Right-wing American commentator Stephen Kent appeared on the programme, drawing a comparison between diverse London and “Pakistan or India”.
“The idea that Britain should be British and that, when you go to London, it should feel like the storybooks and the history books that you were promised is not a controversial idea,” he said. “You’re not going to London to visit Pakistan or India.”
Kent described climate advocacy as having “religious fundamentalist energy”, suggesting it meant “we need to cleanse the Earth of human beings”.
Meanwhile Neil Oliver, who has platformed antisemitic conspiracy theories on his YouTube show, also made an appearance. His output has largely disappeared from TV broadcasts but he remains a GB News host online, where content is largely unregulated by Ofcom.
Night Three: Injecting Bleach
In the third show, Turner challenged a guest, Mally Smith, who had said of Trump’s attack on tylenol: “We also should have scepticism if we’re taking medical advice from one guy who told us to inject bleach during Covid.”
Turner replied: “Just to clarify, he was talking about hydroxychloroquine, which, let’s face it, sounds like a bleach, which was a medication which we now know did well on Covid.”
Smith responded: “He did not. He actually said we should inject bleach.”
In April 2020, President Trump said at a press conference, as the first wave of the Coronavirus was taking hold in the US: “I see the disinfectant where it knocks it [Covid] out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? So it’d be interesting to check that.”
Night Four: Firing Squads
On the show’s fourth airing, Turner said she believed bringing back the death penalty in the UK “would dramatically cut crime, I guarantee it”.
She asked a guest: “President Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, has announced that she’s seeking to apply the death penalty across the whole of the United States. But with Britain’s crime rocketing, is it time to do the same, bring back the death penalty as the ultimate deterrent?”
She also suggested that Charlie Kirk’s alleged murderer should be killed “by firing squad”.
Turner called the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ protest rally in London on 13 September, organised by far-right convicted activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’), a “celebration, I would say, of Britishness on the streets of London”.
The Metropolitan Police described the event as “a very challenging day that saw disorder, violence directed at officers, and 26 officers injured”. There were dozens of arrests for offences including affray, violent disorder, assaults, and criminal damage.
In another segment, right-wing British-Indian activist Aman Bhogal claimed that the UK Government’s plans for digital IDs presented “a very, very slippery socialist slope to full-blooded communism” and that Keir Starmer “might as well rename the country the People’s Republic of North London”.
The programmes have aired frequent claims from Turner and Leo that the Prime Minister should replicate Trump’s border policy, with Turner declaring to a guest that “we” – referring either to GB News or the UK – “are here to be saved!”
Night Five: Language Problems
On the programme’s fifth outing, Leo claimed that “there’s some streets [in the UK] where they don’t speak English at all. I went to one in Leicester the other week”. It is unclear whether he spoke to every resident on these unspecified streets.
According to the latest 2021 Census data, more than 91% (52.6 million) of residents in Britain, aged three years and over, had English (and English or Welsh in Wales) as a main language. A further 7.1% (4.1 million) were proficient in English but did not speak it as their main language.
Guest Raheem Kassam – Editor-in-Chief of the London edition of the Steve Bannon-founded Breitbart News and a former advisor to Nigel Farage – also branded the UK civil service’s “quote unquote, deep state” as “nefarious” and “entrenched”.
Night Six: Big Guns for All
Leo delivered a flurry of concerning comments on the sixth night of the show.
On anti-fascist movement Antifa being classed by the Trump administration as “domestic terrorists”, he said that “we should do the same in the UK”.
On US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) making light of deportations, he said: “As a Brit who has 50,000 illegal migrants flooding the Channel since Labour took power, I quite enjoyed that.”
He praised Trump’s military deployments to Democrat cities, adding: “I love them. I love seeing the National Guard on the streets of DC. They make me feel safe … I salute them.”
And he suggested bringing in the military against asylum seekers in the UK: “President Trump sends in the military to defend immigration officials in Portland, in Oregon. He’s literally sent in the big guns, the army’s there, and they’re protecting the ICE agents against the lunatics from Antifa. Do we need to do the same thing in the UK?”
Night Seven: High Steaks
On the show’s seventh night, Leo cast doubt on Trump’s criminal convictions, the pandemic, what he called the “green scam”, and US election results.
Commenting on the UK Government’s plans for digital IDs, he suggested that it was a form of social control, claiming, without evidence, that it could be used to monitor how much meat people eat.
“Maybe they’d say … you’ve had too many steaks this year … Your carbon footprint is doing harm to the nation … You are eating chickpeas and gruel for the next six months until your social credit score is big enough,” he claimed.
Leo added: “Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I don’t care.”
The GB News anchor also referred to the Coronavirus as a “so-called pandemic”.
Commenting on the 2020 US Presidential Election, which President Joe Biden won, Leo gave a nod to Donald Trump’s debunked claims of election fraud, saying: “Wasn’t it interesting that 20 million less people voted in the election last year than the 2020 Election?… Where did 20 million votes go?” The answer is that many Democrats stayed at home.
In another segment, he said that he was “pro-gun”, adding a usual (and much parodied) pro-gun trope: “I argue guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”
While he conceded that it may be preferable to have no guns, he added: “At a time when criminals, bad people, bad hombres, have access to all sorts of weapons, the only sane response can be: you need to make sure you’re armed yourself.” ■
Turkeys voting for Christmas.
GBNews = Greedy Billionaire News