Can Donald Trump really sue Trevor Noah over a Grammys joke? Legal experts weigh in

President Donald Trump is threatening legal action against comedian Trevor Noah following a joke made during the 67th annual Grammy Awards, but legal experts say the president has virtually no chance of winning such a case.

More than 15 million viewers watched Sunday night’s Grammys broadcast on CBS, which Noah hosted for what he said would be his final time. During his opening monologue, Noah joked about presidential term limits and later made a quip linking Trump’s interest in acquiring Greenland to Jeffrey Epstein’s now-defunct private island, drawing laughter from the audience.

Trump responded hours later on Truth Social, blasting the broadcast as “virtually unwatchable” and singling out Noah for criticism. The president accused the comedian of falsely implying that he had visited Epstein’s island, something Trump emphatically denied, and threatened to sue Noah, calling him a “talentless” and “pathetic” host.

While Trump has appeared in Epstein-related documents, there has never been evidence that he traveled to Epstein’s private island.

The threat is familiar territory. Trump has repeatedly floated lawsuits against comedians and media figures, including Jimmy Kimmel, though many of those threats have never materialized. Trump is currently involved in multiple lawsuits against news organizations, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and others.

To assess whether Trump’s threat carries any legal weight, legal experts were asked whether a joke made during a comedy monologue could plausibly be considered defamation. Their answer was unequivocal: no.

David D. Cole, a Georgetown University law professor and former national legal director of the ACLU, called the idea of a lawsuit “absolutely frivolous.” He explained that defamation law requires a statement to be understood as a factual claim, not satire or humor.

“No reasonable listener would take that joke as a statement of fact,” Cole said. “It fails at the very first step of a defamation analysis.”

Tre Lovell, a California-based attorney specializing in defamation cases, agreed, noting that comedy relies on exaggeration, sarcasm, and absurdity, elements that courts consistently recognize as protected speech.

“It’s entertainment,” Lovell said. “It’s not a factual news report, and no one watching Trevor Noah is treating it as one.”

Both experts said they would be surprised if Trump actually followed through with a lawsuit, given the difficulty of winning such a case. Still, they acknowledged that even baseless legal threats can have a chilling effect on comedians and media organizations, which may fear the cost and burden of defending against litigation.

Cole also pointed to a broader pattern in Trump’s behavior, arguing that repeated legal threats against critics amount to an effort to discourage scrutiny through intimidation rather than legitimate legal claims.

Despite the president’s outburst, the experts emphasized that the law remains firmly on the side of satire, and that jokes, even sharp political ones, remain protected under the First Amendment.