The Kennedy Center Vanished a Trump-Epstein Joke From the Mark Twain Prize Ceremony

“I actually heard Trump may come tonight, but he couldn’t make it. He got caught in sex traffic.”

That was the joke Whitney Cummings told on stage at this year’s Mark Twain Prize Ceremony, and the joke the Kennedy Center would like for you not to see…because this administration would once again like everyone to stop talking about the “hoax” that was Trump’s ties to Epstein. But I guess you already saw it now…Oops!

On Tuesday, the live taping of Bill Maher’s Twain Prize ceremony was released on Netflix, but even though the joke achieved some moderate internet virality in the aftermath of the June ceremony, it was ultimately scrubbed from the final product of the taping. The decision to omit the joke didn’t come from Netflix, but from the venue itself—the building formerly known as the Donald J. Trump AND John F. Kennedy Center—which, as you might recall, had its own complicated relationship with fulfilling the president’s wishes.

“While it’s our preference not to cut jokes from anyone’s set, The Kennedy Center has the contractual right to do so,” the Netflix spokesperson told Variety.

Unsurprisingly, several Trump administration officials were present at the taping of the ceremony, including Mehmet Oz and Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, who very recently claimed that he cut ties with Epstein in 1998, yet was caught emailing about plans to have lunch on Epstein’s island in 2012 in the recent February dump of Epstein files.

“The joke was already leaked by someone that was in the audience,” Cummings said on an earlier episode of her podcast, Good For You. “But then they said, ‘We need to cut it from the broadcast.’ I’m like, ‘Well, it’s already out there.’ Who cares?” I’ve got a theory. It starts with T and ends with rump.

“The people at the venue have been amazing,” Cumming added. “They don’t want to silence anyone. It’s true that their boss is Donald Trump. They did their job.”

Well, file this one in the ever-growing catalog of examples of the so-called party of free speech leading the charge in censorship. I’ll be just as fed up when it inevitably happens again, but I certainly won’t be shocked.