![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/dffd83bb7614b372734faa4a5a1c0ee400-trump-trevor.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images (Jim Watson\/AFP, Kevin Winter)\n <\/p>\n
More than 15 million people<\/a> watched Sunday\u2019s 67th annual Grammy Awards on CBS, and that apparently included\u00a0President Donald Trump, who is threatening to sue the show\u2019s host, Trevor Noah, over a Jeffrey Epstein joke.<\/p>\n Noah, who reminded audiences that this was his final year hosting the show, compared the end of his reign to a presidential run. \u201cI believe in term limits,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to set an example for anyone who might be watching the show. Just leave when your term is up. You know. Whatever.\u201d It wasn\u2019t his only nod to Trump. While introducing the award for Song of the Year, Noah noted how it was one of the big awards of the night. \u201cThat is a Grammy that every artist wants almost as much as Trump wants Greenland, which makes sense \u2026 because Epstein\u2019s island is gone, [so] he needs a new one to hang out with Bill Clinton,\u201d Noah said<\/a>.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t take long for Trump to reveal exactly what he\u2019s going to do about it \u2014 call his lawyers. Posting on Truth Social<\/a> after the broadcast ended, Trump called it \u201cvirtually unwatchable\u201d and then he took aim at Noah directly, saying he was \u201calmost as bad as Jimmy Kimmel.\u201d In the tirade, he also said Noah \u201cINCORRECTLY\u201d stated that he\u2019s been to Epstein\u2019s island. \u201cWRONG!!!\u201d he claimed. Despite Trump appearing in Epstein\u2019s files, there has never been any evidence that the president visited his island.<\/p>\n Trump also, because he can\u2019t not, called Noah a \u201ctotal loser\u201d and then threatened him. He \u201cbetter get his facts straight, and get them straight fast. It looks like I\u2019ll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless dope of an M.C., and suing him for plenty$,\u201d Trump wrote<\/a>. \u201cGet ready Noah, I\u2019m going to have some fun with you! President DJT.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the first time Trump has threatened legal action against a comedian. Last year, after Jimmy Kimmel returned to the air after his three-day suspension <\/a>for remarks over Charlie Kirk\u2019s death, Trump was shocked and called Kimmel\u00a0\u201cyet another arm of the DNC\u201d on Truth Social, <\/a>saying that would be a \u201cmajor illegal Campaign Contribution.\u201d Trump said at the time that he was going to \u201ctest ABC out\u201d and then pointed out he received a $15 million settlemen<\/a>t from ABC in 2024 after Good Morning America anchor George Stephanopoulos misstated the verdicts of the E. Jean Carroll civil cases. Trump also previously received a $16 million settlement<\/a> from CBS over its editing of a Kamala Harris interview on CBS.\u00a0Kimmel called Trump a \u201cbully\u201d on air <\/a>the next day, and Trump never went through with his threat.<\/p>\n But does it actually mean anything that Trump is threatening to sue? He already has five other pending lawsuits against the media. According to the Washington Post<\/a>, Trump\u00a0is currently suing the New York Times, the Pulitzer Prize Board, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and the Des Moines Register. Because his lawyers are so busy, we reached out to two legal experts on our own to see if Trump actually has\u00a0an actionable case against Noah. Thankfully for Noah, both experts \u2014 Georgetown University Law and Public Policy professor David D. Cole, the former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Tre Lovell, a California litigator and expert in defamation cases \u2014 agree: Jokes are legal.<\/p>\n Both Cole and Lovell said it\u2019s far-fetched for a court to view a joke as defamation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be an absolutely frivolous lawsuit,\u201d Cole said. \u201cIt was a joke made during a comedic monologue. No reasonable listener would take it as stating any particular fact as true, and so I think there is no basis for a defamation lawsuit whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n Cole explained that in order for a statement to be considered defamatory by a court, it would have to pass a tough test.\u00a0It not only would have to be \u201cunderstood as a statement of fact,\u201d but it also has to be knowingly false or said with reckless disregard for whether it was\u00a0true or false.<\/p>\n \u201cBut this claim would fail at the first stage,\u201d Cole said.\u00a0 \u201cIt is not a statement of fact. It is a joke. And so there is literally no justification for a defamation suit with respect to Trevor Noah\u2019s statement.\u201d<\/p>\n Lovell agreed.<\/p>\n \u201cComedy is a combination of satire, sarcasm, absurdity, things that want to make you laugh,\u201d Lovell said. \u201cThe person is not listening to that and taking anything that Trevor Noah is saying as factual. It\u2019s meant to be funny. It\u2019s entertainment. It\u2019s not a factual news report.\u201d<\/p>\n Lovell said he would be very surprised if Trump actually decided to file a lawsuit against Noah, because it would be a very difficult case to win.<\/p>\n \u201cDoes this mean Trump won\u2019t sue?\u00a0No,\u201d Cole said. \u201cDoes that mean a media company might not settle? No, but I would hope that this time they would stand up for their principles and get the case dismissed, which they could have and should have done with respect to the Kamala Harris interview [on 60 Minutes \u2014 CBS later settled the lawsuit, <\/a>paying Trump $16 million in damages]. This is an equally baseless lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnytime somebody says something bad about Trump that he doesn\u2019t like, he threatens to come after them,\u201d Lovell said. \u201cAnd it could have a chilling effect on comedians, because even if it\u2019s a meritless case and a completely frivolous case, they don\u2019t want to have to go through the steps of having to address it and defeat it.\u201d<\/p>\n More so, Trump\u2019s outburst is illustrating his pattern of attacking the press. \u201cHe has undertaken a campaign to try to silence criticism of his actions through fear and through wielding the power of the federal government even where he has baseless claims,\u201d Cole said.<\/p>\n \u201cThankfully, Trevor Noah was not chilled,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images (Jim Watson\/AFP, Kevin Winter) More than 15 million people watched Sunday\u2019s 67th annual…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":564548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[246233,69,171,93597,116325,336,50,181253,173,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-564547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ask-an-expert","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-grammys","tag-jokes","tag-lawsuits","tag-news","tag-trevor-noah","tag-tv","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116009746314306276","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}