Trevor Noah addresses the elephant in the room in his latest Netflix special, Joy in the Trenches.
Filmed at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., the former Daily Show host‘s comedy set hit the streaming service on Tuesday. Noah covers myriad topics about the state of the world, U.S. politics, and social media, including the time Donald Trump threatened to sue him over his Epstein joke at Grammys.
“It hits different when you’re in the crosshairs,” he says. “I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty crazy.”
At the start of the set, Noah speaks about hosting The Daily Show for seven years, where he covered Trump and his administration every week, and essentially assumed the president would come after him at one point, which he didn’t. “Then I left The Daily Show, and I relaxed like an idiot in a horror movie,” says Noah.
In February, when hosting the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, Noah announced Song of the Year winner Billie Eilish, then delivered the joke that irked the president: “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.” (Trump and former U.S. President Bill Clinton are known to have associated with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein; both have denied they visited Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, a central location for his crimes).
Opening Joy in the Trenches, Noah takes the audience through what happened after the Grammys, when he flew back to Boston, getting thumbs ups from fellow passengers, and received an avalanche of messages — all while his phone was off.
“I turned on my phone and honestly, I thought the thing was malfunctioning, because it started vibrating before the icons popped up,” he says. “Every app was going crazy: iMessage, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, even Uber Eats was like, ‘Yo, you got some hot shit coming in, man.’ I went to my messages, and everyone I’ve ever known in my life had texted me. Everyone. From kindergarten teachers onwards.”
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Noah explains, of course, he finally saw the post from Trump on his own platform, Truth Social, which the president posted just after the Grammys aired. Here, onstage, Noah reads the entire Truth Social post to the audience “because I don’t want to misquote anything.” Yelling every time Trump uses capitals (which is often), Noah runs through every quote from “The Grammy Awards are the WORST, virtually unwatchable!” to Trump’s denial that he’s “never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close.”
Watching Noah’s response to each of these lines is worth watching the special alone, including Trump’s statement: “The host, Trevor Noah, whoever he may be, is almost as bad as Jimmy Kimmel at the Low Ratings Academy Awards.”
“You can’t say ‘the host, Trevor Noah, whoever he may be,’ because that is exactly who I may be,” Noah says. “I understand he was trying to dismiss me, but you said my full name and my job title on the night. You can’t be dismissive and be vague and specific at the same time. That’s not how that works. ‘Whoever he may be’ — I be nobody else. There is no may in this equation. That is exactly who I be.”
“It hits different when you’re in the crosshairs.”
Of course, Noah addresses the fact that Trump threatened that “it looks like I’ll be sending my lawyers” to sue the comedian for defamation, then concluded, “Get ready Noah, I’m going to have some fun with you!” — a line Noah seizes upon for its undeniably creepiness.
“That last line is something: Get ready Noah, I’m going to have some fun with you! You know, if you’re not trying to sound like a sexual deviant, you this is not the line I would recommend.”
Noah gets real at one point, not sure how to react to the whole thing, and not knowing whether he’ll actually be sued by Trump or not (depends on the week with the president, really). Trump has not filed a formal lawsuit in federal or state court.
“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know how to feel, because I don’t know how this will play out,” Noah says. “With him, there is no knowing.”
Trevor Noah: Joy in the Trenches is now streaming on Netflix.
