Trump assails Grammys and threatens to sue Trevor Noah over Epstein joke

Trump assails Grammys and threatens to sue Trevor Noah over Epstein joke — Static01.nyt.com
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President Trump on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, sharply criticized the Grammys telecast and threatened to sue its host, Trevor Noah, over a joke that appeared to tie Mr. Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, writing on Truth Social just after 1 a.m. Eastern after the broadcast ended. Mr. Trump called the awards ceremony "the WORST, virtually unwatchable!" and said the network was "lucky not to have this garbage litter their airwaves any longer" after the program, which ran for more than three hours, aired on CBS for the final time following a decades-long run.

The broadcast included several swipes by some of music’s biggest stars at the federal government’s militarized crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the report says. Mr. Noah made the quip toward the end of the ceremony after Billie Eilish won a Grammy for song of the year, saying, "That is a Grammy that every artist wants almost as much as Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton." The story notes that Jeffrey Epstein kept a home on a private Caribbean island where his accusers have said that he trafficked underage girls for sex and that the Justice Department has released millions of files as part of a yearslong investigation; Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019.

The files contain numerous references to Mr. Trump, who was a close friend of Mr. Epstein’s until the early 2000s, though the president has denied any wrongdoing in connection with Mr.

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