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

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Washington is negotiating with Havana’s leadership to strike a deal, Donald Trump has said, days after threatening Cuba’s reeling economy with a virtual oil blockade.

“Cuba is a failing nation. It has been for a long time but now it doesn’t have Venezuela to prop it up. So we’re talking to the people from Cuba, the highest people in Cuba, to see what happens,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida on Sunday.

“I think we’re going to make a deal with Cuba.”

Trump gave no indication what such a deal might entail.

The US president had said on Saturday: “It doesn’t have to be a humanitarian crisis. I think they probably would come to us and want to make a deal … They have a situation that’s very bad for Cuba. They have no money. They have no oil. They lived off Venezuelan money and oil, and none of that’s coming now.”

Trump’s second administration has been ratcheting up pressure on the communist-run island nation off south Florida since it ousted the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, whose country was a close ally of Havana and a crucial source for oil exports to Cuba.

Yohannes Lowe

The Reuters news agency is reporting that the US envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to visit Israel for meetings with the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its military chief, Eyal Zamir, citing two senior Israeli officials.

Witkoff’s visit will reportedly begin tomorrow. We don’t know exactly what will be discussed but the trip comes as the Gaza ceasefire agreement edges forward despite Israel’s frequent killing of Palestinian people in violation of its terms.

The next phases of Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza require governance to be handed to Palestinian technocrats, Hamas to lay down its weapons and Israeli troops to withdraw from the territory while Gaza is rebuilt.

New Epstein files reveal he may have trafficked girls to others despite official denials

Victoria Bekiempis

The disclosure of more than 3m files related to Jeffrey Epstein suggests that other men were involved in his sexual abuse, prompting questions about officials’ contentions that there isn’t evidence to investigate third parties for potential involvement in the late financier’s crimes.

Some newly released documents contain allegations that Epstein provided victims to other men. Documents released in prior disclosures, as well as court documents, also point to others’ possible criminal involvement with Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.

One accuser said that Maxwell told her that Epstein had to leave his house but that there was a friend staying who she could massage. During this encounter, this associate allegedly offered her money if she engaged in sex.

The woman alleged that she did so and that this friend paid her money. A “prosecution memorandum” dated 26 January 2021 and signed by assistant US attorneys from the southern district of New York described this encounter and said that when the woman’s lawyers showed her a photo of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, she identified him as this man. The names of the US attorneys are redacted.

It’s not clear to what extent authorities investigated these allegations. Weinstein was never charged for any conduct related to Epstein.

One document, and FBI presentation that appears to have been created sometime after late July 2025, described an allegation that Epstein “told [an accuser] to give [Harvey] Weinstein a massage, during which Weinstein tells her to take off her shirt, she refuses and then Weinstein threatens to get women to come force her too.”

Weinstein, who is in jail after being convicted of sexual assault and was one of the most prominent targets of the MeToo movement, rejects misconduct claims.

Trump threatens to sue comedian Trevor Noah over Grammys Epstein joke

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.

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.

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