President Donald Trump on Monday sharply criticized this year’s Grammys telecast and threatened to sue its host, comedian Trevor Noah, over a joke that appeared to tie Trump to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“The Grammy Awards are the WORST, virtually unwatchable!” Trump wrote on Truth Social just after 1 a.m. Eastern time, after the broadcast ended.

The awards program, which ran for more than three hours, included several swipes by some of music’s biggest stars at the federal government’s militarized crackdown on immigrants in the country illegally. It aired on CBS for the final time Sunday after a decades-long run — a change that the president noted in his post by saying that the network was “lucky not to have this garbage litter their airwaves any longer.”

Trump addressed Noah in even sharper personal terms over a quip that the former host of “The Daily Show” made toward the end of the ceremony after Billie Eilish won a Grammy for song of the year.

Noah’s Joke

Noah said: “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.”

Epstein kept a home on a private Caribbean island where his accusers have said he trafficked underage girls for sex.

The Justice Department has released millions of files as part of a yearslong investigation into Epstein, who died in a New York City jail cell in 2019. Although they contain numerous references to Trump, who was a close friend of Epstein’s until the early 2000s, the president has denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

Like Trump, Clinton has appeared in the Epstein files. Clinton has denied having a close relationship with Epstein, and his office has said that Clinton “knows nothing about the terrible crimes” Epstein has been accused of committing.

In his Truth Social post, Trump said he had “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.”

“Noah, a total loser, better get his facts straight, and get them straight fast. 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 continued.

Representatives for the Grammys and Noah did not immediately respond to requests for comment early Monday.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Matt Stevens
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