Donald Trump has confirmed that he will sue Grammys host Trevor Noah after he made a joke about the president and Jeffrey Epstein.
The South African comedian was in charge at last night’s event in LA, which was already causing controversy thanks to a bold outfit choice from Chappell Roan and a rather amusing moment from Cher, when she announced a winner as an artist who has been dead for over 20 years.
A number of the winners at the music awards, including Billie Eilish, Bad Bunny and Olivia Dean, were also quick to call out the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the recent shootings in Minneapolis, which claimed the lives of US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Naturally, the hosts at events such as the Grammys and the Oscars are paid to make jokes about current events, so Noah was perhaps always going to make reference to the extra three million pages of the Epstein files which were released late last week.
He said: “Song of the Year — 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.”
While being mentioned in the files doesn’t indicate wrongdoing, the president is mentioned more than 1,000 times in the latest release, and was a long-time associate of the disgraced financier.
However, he and many others have unsurprisingly continued to deny ever visiting his infamous island, where young girls would be taken and abused.
Trump has now claimed that Noah’s joke was ‘false and defamatory’ and vowed to sue him in an outburst on Truth Social.
The 79-year-old wrote: “Noah said, INCORRECTLY about me, that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epstein Island. WRONG!!!
“I can’t speak for Bill, but I have never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close, and until tonight’s false and defamatory statement, have never been accused of being there, not even by the Fake News Media.
“It looks like I’ll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless, dope of an M.C., and suing him for plenty$.”
Trump also addressed the situation on Saturday (31 January) while speaking to reporters on Air Force One, after even more fury was directed towards those mentioned in the extensive files.
He said: “I didn’t see it myself but I was told by some very important people that, not only does it absolve me, it’s the opposite of what people were hoping, you know, the radical left.”
The White House and Department of Justice also hit out at the claims, calling them ‘unfounded and false’, pointing out that the claims would have already been used as political ammunition against the president if they were credible.
“Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” they said in a press release.
“To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false, and if they have a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponised against President Trump already.”
