Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophasis

Well done.

The line by Rutger Bregman accused Donald Trump of being “the most openly corrupt president in American history”.

Chilling effect resulting from the threats of the loudest bully in the place right now.

Does not the UK have a Matt Taibbi equivalent reporter? This would seem to be in the vein of Taibbi's "Twitter Files" reporting.

Wow... If the BBC had any serious leadership they would ignore such legal advice and do their jobs as journalists.

They're bending to an imaginary threat that hasn't even been made yet. Nobody said they would sue them over quoting that line. If anyone it would be Rutger Bregman that gets sued by the Trump administration for saying it, not others reporting on it.

And even that seems unlikely as it could make this the biggest example of the Streisand effect in history. Bregman would say "See how corrupt he is? He's silencing journalists discussing his corruption" and get 100x more publicity than his lecture ever got.