Behind the scenes on Breakfast: Stephen Dixon's big dilemma in last-minute show shake-up

GB News presenters Stephen Dixon and Ellie Costello gave GB News members a glimpse behind the scenes this morning, explaining how the Breakfast team quickly reacted in the very early hours after US news had broken overnight.

Stephen explained to members that the team had had to totally redo their plan for the show and decide how much time to spend on the Donald Trump hush money trial verdict. Trump became the first US president to be criminally convicted last night, meaning many in the UK woke up to the news today.

"Do we do all Trump all morning? You would, I guess ordinarily do, apart from the fact we're in a General Election campaign," he asked.

Sitting in hair and make-up, Ellie explained the plan for the show was being shaken up less than two hours before going live on air.

She said: "The Trump news has just broken overnight - at about half past ten last night - so the Breakfast team are actually redoing the running order in the newsroom right now, as we speak."

Shortly after, Stephen explained he was reading through the revamped running order.

"Well, it is currently 5:14. So I've been in a little while now, going through all the stuff of the day," he said.

Stephen Dixon and Ellie Costello in behind the scenes photos at GB News

"This is our marvellous Bible that's got all the details in of all our guests and things are just working out.

"This is all put together the day before and then when we come in, we go through it and decide what we're going to keep, what we're going to drop, because of course things change overnight.

"Today we've got the Trump verdict, so we're going through all the guests on that, working out how we put them in, how it's going to work, and then decide how much, because we had a choice today. Do we do all Trump all morning? You would, I guess ordinarily do, apart from the fact we're in a General Election campaign.

"So we've decided we're not going to do that.

"So we're doing Trump for the first block and then British politics for the second block, because we can't not cover the election over here, can we? That would be crazy.

"So I've just been going through all of that with my senior producer, and now I need to read through and work out a bit more about what we're going to do.

"On the guests that we've got in, we've got Mel Stride for the government and Peter Kyle for the Labour Party in today.

"Plus a whole load of US guests, including Nigel Farage, of course, because he's obviously very well connected with Trump and sort of involved in the Trump campaign.

"We're talking to Farage about the convictions at 7 am this morning, so that's going to be interesting.

"It's always quite interesting when you need to do a robust interview with a colleague.

"Thankfully, Nigel understands how it works so we can be quite firm with him over that, which is what you've got to be if you want to be fair and balanced and present all sides of the story with all of this."

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Donald Trump in pictures after hush money trial in New York

Stephen also spoke about preparing for the show after the news had broken so late in the evening.

"I woke up to the news this morning because I was in bed long before Trump was convicted," he said.

"I had a listen in the car this morning to various radio stations with good analysis.

"It's very difficult, especially because I know from our viewers that a lot of you - not all of you - but a lot of you quite like Trump and get a bit annoyed when we then have to be critical of Trump, but that is part of the job.

"You know, we can't just say, 'Oh, the man's clearly politically persecuted.' You've got to go through all the angles on this, so it's a case of getting across all of that. We've got some good guests today actually on that."