Hasan Minhaj’s ‘Emotional Truths’ Debacle Disqualifies Him From Hosting ‘Daily Show,’ Former Staffers Say | Exclusive

To the average person, the New Yorker’s expose on Hasan Minhaj’s fabrications in his stand-up routine may be shocking. But three former “Daily Show” staffers who spoke exclusively with TheWrap said they were not surprised.

“There was always this suspicion that maybe this guy’s full of s–t. Maybe he’s exaggerating,” one former staffer told TheWrap, noting that Minhaj’s stories in his stand-up always seemed “too perfectly set up.”

The admissions by Minhaj that several incident of racism didn’t happen to him, or didn’t happen the way he recounted, should disqualify him to host the Comedy Central news-comedy show, they said.

“It’s extremely dangerous to cry wolf on racism, especially if you want to be the host of a very influential, politically-driven show,” a former “Daily Show” staffer said.

“I don’t know how [his staff] can take him seriously on day one when he doubled down on his own lies and ridiculous excuses that his lies were emotional truths. It’s almost a parody,” another former staffer said.

In conversations with former “Daily Show” staffers, media experts and comedy insiders, Minhaj was accused of being unethical and hurting other people of color by fabricating stories of racism that happened to him – and “giving white supremacists the supposed proof they need.”

Nonetheless, Minhaj remains one of the top names in contention to take over hosting duties of “The Daily Show.” Their personal levels of frustration toward Minhaj may vary, but all three former staffers agreed: Minhaj shouldn’t take over the Comedy Central staple.

“The Daily Show’s” reputation and bulls–t mountain

To understand these former staffers’ particular frustrations, one first needs to understand the place “The Daily Show” occupies in pop culture. The Comedy Central talk show was first hosted by Craig Kilborn, but it was Jon Stewart’s reign and his dedication to calling out “bulls–t mountain” — Stewart’s favored phrase for Fox News — that turned it into the comedy institution it is today.

With its blend of fearless reporting and cutting jokes, “The Daily Show” paved the way for a new kind of late-night show, one that was as equally dedicated to good journalism and making a political point as it was to getting a laugh. “The Daily Show” set the stage for similar political comedy shows such as “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee,” “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” and, yes, “Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj.”

Field reporting and rigorous fact-checking are common parts of the job. One former “Daily Show” staffer told TheWrap it was a “known fact” a writer would be fired for misreporting or presenting Stewart with a factual inaccuracy.

“With [‘The Daily Show’] came responsibility. You didn’t make s–t up, and you didn’t punch down. Both Trevor [Noah] and Jon kept that ethos alive. But Hasan did both of those things,” one former staffer said. “He hurt other people of color by giving white supremacists the supposed proof they need that people of color shouldn’t be trusted when they talk about discrimination.”

“To me, what went on disqualifies him from that particular role,” another former staffer told TheWrap, adding that he doesn’t think Minhaj should be “canceled.” “And not from many, many other things in entertainment. Not stand-up, by the way, not that. But for me, this particular hosting job, it should disqualify him.”

Minhaj’s “dangerous” brand of “emotional truths”

In his defense, both in the New Yorker piece and beyond, Minhaj has maintained that though he fabricated stories, the “emotional truth” of his work has remained true.

“All my stand-up stories are based on events that happened to me,” Minhaj said in a statement to TheWrap. “I use the tools of stand-up comedy — hyperbole, changing names and locations, and compressing timelines to tell entertaining stories. That’s inherent to the art form.”

Some have defended Minhaj’s right to embellish, including Whoopi Goldberg. “That’s what [stand-up comedians] do. We tell stories and we embellish them,” Goldberg said last week on “The View.”

But others haven’t been as generous. In his response to Minhaj’s fabrications, journalist Noor Noman, who’s Pakistani American and “culturally Muslim,” wrote, “In every story, [Minhaj] is the brown David to a white Goliath. But in lying and painting himself as the fictional victim, he both weaponizes racism and becomes an oppressor, the very same kind of role he critiques in his work.”

“I don’t think it’s very ethical,” Aly Colón, a former journalist and Knight Professor who teaches Media Ethics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington Virginia, told TheWrap, “[Minhaj] appears to be taking some pretty serious and concerning behavior and making it something that is affecting him directly.”

Colón added, “In every case where we exaggerate or make up what’s going on, we put our integrity and our credibility at risk. When we put ourselves in a situation where we have an intersection of reality and fabrication, people will not be able to understand which one you’re doing.”

He echoed Noman’s thoughts, saying that Minhaj’s half-truths “make him look more like a victim than he might be.”

Even if you are to take Minhaj’s comedy defense at face value, the ethical question around his work remains murky. “He does seem to be telling autobiographical stories, and a lot of the content is a bizarre thing that it would be ludicrous to claim for your own experience if you haven’t actually experienced it,” Seth Simons, the writer behind the comedy substack Humorism and whose work has appeared in Slate, VICE and Esquire, told TheWrap.

“I tend to think you have a lot of leeway to lie to people in comedy. I don’t think you should lie to them if they think you’re telling the truth to try to be pithy about it,” Simons said. “It seems to me like he took freedom a little too far.”

Minhaj’s representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment on this story.

The quandary of the anthrax story

One specific example of Minhaj’s fabrications is his anthrax story. The anecdote, which appears in Minhaj’s “The King’s Jester” Netflix special, chronicles how an envelope of anthrax was delivered to his apartment and accidentally spilled on his daughter, leading to a panicked hospital visit. This moment is presented not as a joke but as a cautionary tale, illustrating how Minhaj speaking out about racial discrimination has real-world consequences.

But, as the New Yorker article uncovers, that hospital visit never happened. Though an envelope containing some sort of powder was allegedly sent to Minhaj’s apartment, it didn’t contain anthrax and his daughter was never exposed to the substance.

Not only that, but though Minhaj has maintained that these fabrications have only appeared in his stand-up, he spoke about the anthrax story during a 2022 PBS interview with Hari Sreenivasan. In the interview, the comedian presents the story as fact and doesn’t state that it’s hyperbole as he would claim a year later.

“On his TV show, he seemed to screw up. On his stand-up, he seemed to screw up. On a personal level, he seemed to screw up, and he’s owning it all in this weird Trumpian way where he’s like, ‘No, I’m going to stand by what I did. It’s emotional truths,’” one former “Daily Show” staffer said. “He lied about his own daughter nearly contracting anthrax. Like what the f–k?”

What Minhaj could cost “The Daily Show”

It’s one thing for a comedian to exaggerate or fabricate stories in their own stand-up. But there’s a concern Minhaj’s reputation will taint both “The Daily Show” and this entire subgenre of comedy as a whole.

“Let’s say he were to host,” one former staffer told TheWrap. “He’s dragged down the entire ecosphere of that political, issue-based comedy. It’s like, ‘Well Hasan made that up. Everybody makes things up.’ But no! We f–ing did not. We busted our ass to exactly not do that.”

There’s another less moralistic and more practical concern about Minhaj potentially taking over this storied role: his staff. “The Daily Show” is composed of a team of dedicated writers, comedians, journalists and fact checkers.

“I don’t know how they can take him seriously on day one when he doubled down on his own lies and ridiculous excuses that his lies were emotional truths. It’s almost a parody,” a former staffer said.

These concerns are in addition to the workplace controversies already surrounding Minhaj from his time leading “Patriot Act.” In addition to uncovering the concerns about fact-checking that led to a pair of female researchers being asked to leave the writers room, journalist Clare Malone reported on the legal threat against the show.

“A document reviewed by The New Yorker revealed that three women had hired an attorney and threatened litigation against Netflix and ‘Patriot Act’s’ production company, alleging gender discrimination, sex-based harassment and retaliation,” Malone wrote in her original article.

Will this controversy hurt Minhaj?

Even though there’s a lot of criticism around Minhaj at present, will it actually impact anything? Those enmeshed in the comedy world have mixed feelings.

“Unfortunately, I think it will have very little impact on his career or anything,” a former “Daily Show” staffer said.

Another revealed that he’s still hearing the comedian is the “top choice” for the hosting gig, though he admitted he doesn’t “know how accurate that is.”

Simons, who has spent the better part of 10 years writing about comedy, finds it telling that “there’s not much backlash against the backlash that you often see with other scandals.”

“My takeaway from that, and from the article itself, is that it doesn’t seem like he has a lot of friends in the industry, which I think is probably important when it comes to staffing the show like ‘The Daily Show,'” Simons said. “I generally assume when I see these things, what I’m hearing about is the tip of the iceberg, and there’s probably much more unpleasant news behind the scenes. So I read that and I think, ‘OK, there is a lot of s–t surrounding this guy.'”

Simons went on to note that the heads of Comedy Central are “probably thinking about all of the potential liabilities that would be involved in putting him in charge of a major show, probably the most major show on the network right now.”

There’s also the frustrating fact that there’s no blueprint for this type of story. There have been several comedians who have been “canceled” over the years, but the public outrage around these figures typically either comes from racism or sexual misconduct accusations. The list of comedians whose career has been impacted due to their lies is basically one name long: Stephen Rannazzisi, the comedian who lied about working in the South Tower of the World Trade Center during 9/11.

“But even then, that guy did not testify before Congress. That guy did not walk around with his Peabody awards, his journalistic awards,” a former “Daily Show” staffer noted. “The thing that’s so disingenuous about this is that he’s trying to take over the mantle of a show that always had one foot in journalism and one foot in comedy.”

“I don’t know how ‘The Daily Show’ can remain a credible voice of satire on current events if the host of the show has based his career on a series of lies meant to provoke sympathy,” another former staffer said. “I think it would be really cynical if the powers that be just ignore it, hope it goes away and install this person that they maybe had their eye on before all this… I think people will mind.”

When asked for comment on this story, a representative for Comedy Central said, “We have no news to report about a new host of ‘The Daily Show’ at this time.”

Loree Seitz contributed to this story.

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