Trump threatens to sue Trevor Noah over Epstein joke at Grammys – US politics live

Key events12m agoTrump threatens to sue comedian Trevor Noah over Grammys Epstein jokeShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureTrump threatens to sue comedian Trevor Noah over Grammys Epstein jokeGood morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.President Donald Trump is once again in the mood for litigation. This morning he has threatened to sue Grammys host Trevor Noah after a joke he made about Jeffrey Epstein on stage.Joking that this will be his last year as host, Noah quipped: 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. In repsonse, the US president said the comedian, who hosted The Daily Show on Comedy Central in the US for seven years, was a “total loser”, adding: 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 criticised South African-born Noah‘s joke, made after the song of the year gong was handed out.Writing on Truth Social, in his usual frenetic, rambling style, Trump said: 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. Noah, a total loser, better get his facts straight, and get them straight fast. He added: Get ready Noah, I’m going to have some fun with you! In recent years, Trump has resorted to legal action against a slew of media outlets including the BBC, the New York Times, the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal.Last July, US media giant Paramount, which owns CBS, agreed to pay Trump $16m to settle a lawsuit over a CBS interview with Kamala Harris, the former vice-president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee.In other developments: Trump announced a two-year closure of the Kennedy Center, citing construction needs to make the “finest performing arts facility of its kind, anywhere in the world”. Writing on Truth Social on Sunday evening, Trump added that the center’s closure will pave way for a “new and spectacular entertainment complex”. The deputy US attorney general, Todd Blanche, the point person on the Trump administration’s Epstein files release, told ABC News on Sunday that prosecutors’ review of the Jeffrey Epstein-Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking case “is over”. While Blanche acknowledged “there’s a lot of horrible photographs that appear to be taken by Mr Epstein or by people around him … that doesn’t allow us necessarily to prosecute somebody”. Government documents have identified the two federal officers who fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as Jesus Ochoa, a border patrol agent, and Raymundo Gutierrez, an officer with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), according to ProPublica. According to those records, Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, were the agents who fired their weapons during the confrontation last weekend that resulted in Pretti’s death. A five-year-old boy and his father were back in Minneapolis on Sunday after being released from a Texas immigration detention center where they were held for more than a week, according to US House representative Joaquin Castro. Trump said his administration was in talks with Cuban leadership over a potential deal, following his earlier threats to stop the country from importing oil. The ongoing partial US government shutdown is expected to continue into early next week, with no reopening likely before Tuesday, if what federal officials on both sides of the country’s political aisle are saying is any indication. All vaccine recommendations are being reconsidered by the US’s vaccines committee, according to its top adviser, who in recent interviews slammed the requirements for attending school and said vaccines should be taken on the advice of an individual’s doctor.