LOS ANGELES (AP) — Trevor Noah once again roamed through the audience during his monologue to open the Grammy Awards, taking pokes at the stars while standing right next to them, but he saved his most pointed jokes for absentees, and elicited an angry post from the president.
“ Nicki Minaj is not here,” Noah said, to big cheers from the audience at Crypto.com Arena. “She is still at the White House with Donald Trump discussing very important issues.”
Minaj this week visited and praised the president, the culmination of a move toward MAGA that she’s made in recent months.
Noah broke into a Trump impression. “Actually Nicki, I have the biggest ass, everybody’s saying it Nicki.”
In his sixth time hosting the show — and what he says will be his last — Noah mostly played it safe during his monologue, not delving too much into much politics or controversy, at least during his monologue. There was no mention of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (on a night when many attendees were wearing “ICE OUT” buttons).
But Noah got more pointed later in the show, after Billie Eilish won song of the year.
“Wow. That is a Grammy that every artist wants,” Noah said, “almost as much as Trump wants Greenland. Which makes sense. I mean, because Epstein’s island is gone, he needs a new island to hang out with Bill Clinton.”
After the show in a Truth Social post, Trump reacted.
“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 being there, not even by the Fake News Media,” the post said. “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.”
After the crowd’s reaction to the joke during the show, Noah said, “Oh, I told you, it’s my last year. What are you going to do about it?”
At a different point in the show, Noah joked about the president’s penchant for suing TV networks when he said the Grammys were airing “completely live” because “if we edited any of the show, the president would sue CBS for $16 billion,” referring to Trump’s recent history with CBS News and a settlement he got from Paramount last summer.
It had seemed at first like he wasn’t going to go very far into such material.
He said during the monologue Lauryn Hill was performing on the show for the first time since 1999.
“Do you understand how long ago that is?” he said. “Back in 1999, the president had had a sex scandal, people thought computers were about to destroy the world, and Diddy was arrested.”
Later in the show, Noah cozied up to the night’s biggest nominee, Kendrick Lamar, and only congratulated him.
“I actually thought about writing a few jokes roasting you, but then I remembered what you can do to light-skinned dudes from other countries,” Noah, who is from South Africa, said in a reference to Lamar’s beef with the Canadian rapper Drake that culminated in last year’s big Grammy winner “Not Like Us.”
Later, he sat with Bad Bunny, and asked if he could come live with him in his native Puerto Rico if things got too bad in the U.S.
“Trevor I have some news for you,” Bad Bunny said. “Puerto Rico is part of America.”
The Recording Academy announced less than three weeks ago that Noah was returning “one final time.”
“I believe in term limits,” Noah said during the show.
Only singer Andy Williams, who hosted the Grammys seven times in the 1970s, has hosted more often.
Noah himself is a four-time Grammy nominee, and was up this year in the best audio book recording category for “Into The Uncut Grass,” a children’s story. He lost to the Dalai Lama.
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This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Nicki Minaj in several places.
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