Comedian Whitney Cummings performed at the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize ceremony honoring Bill Maher on June 28. During her set, Cummings says she delivered a joke about President Donald Trump that appeared to reference Jeffrey Epstein. However, she and several reports say the joke does not appear in the Netflix broadcast of the event, which streams July 21.
Variety and other outlets report Cummings’ claim that Netflix removed the moment from the stream. Fox News and Deadline frame the issue as a Netflix cut. In contrast, The Hollywood Reporter reports that Netflix did not remove the joke and instead says the Kennedy Center cut it from the televised/streamed program. The New York Times similarly reports that the Kennedy Center’s inclusion of the joke at the live event did not carry over to the Netflix special.
All accounts agree on the live performance and the absence of the specific joke from the Netflix version; they differ on which entity made the decision to exclude it.
