“The Daily Show,” a left-wing “comedy” show, was set to name comedian Hasan Minhaj as its replacement for previous host Trevor Noah until he was exposed by The New Yorker.
“According to multiple sources, the former correspondent’s deal to take over as Noah’s replacement was all but done by late summer, when The New Yorker published an article alleging that he’d exaggerated and, in some cases, made up autobiographical details of his comedy,” The Hollywood Reporter reported Thursday.
“Though Minhaj called the piece ‘needlessly misleading,’ he was suddenly seen as a liability, and the host search began anew,” according to the paper.
What a fraud. Captures how generation Z *wants* to feel. Forget truth. Narrative > truth. Narrative = clicks. Clicks = $$$$https://t.co/sq7lGukiSY#HasanMinhaj
— A.D. (@elasticretreat) September 16, 2023
For instance, he once claimed that a Netflix comedy show of his had triggered threatening messages, including a letter he received at his home that contained a white powder.
He claimed that the powder had spilled onto his daughter and that he’d then rushed her to the hospital, where doctors had discovered that the powder wasn’t anthrax.
There’s just one problem: The story was reportedly a complete fabrication.
“The New York Police Department, which investigates incidents of possible Bacillus anthracis [anthrax], has no record of an incident like the one Minhaj describes, nor do area hospitals,” according to The New Yorker.
Moreover, Minhaj eventually “admitted that his daughter had never been exposed to a white powder, and that she hadn’t been hospitalized.”
He’d made it all up, it turned out, to make some sort of point.
“The punch line is worth the fictionalized premise,” he told the outlet.
But there’s more.
He also once claimed that an FBI informant had infiltrated his family’s Sacramento-area mosque in 2002, when he was still in high school.
“As Minhaj tells it, Brother Eric, a muscle-bound white man who said he was a convert to Islam, gained the trust of the mosque community,” according to The New Yorker. “He went to dinner at Minhaj’s house, and even offered to teach weight training to the community’s teen-age boys.”
“But Minhaj had Brother Eric pegged from the beginning. Eventually, Brother Eric tried to entice the boys into talking about jihad. Minhaj decided to mess with Brother Eric, telling him that he wanted to get his pilot’s license. Soon, the police were on the scene, slamming Minhaj against the hood of a car.”
This too was all made up, reportedly for the purposes of drawing attention to what Muslim communities had endured post the Sept. 11th terror attack.
Minhaj responded to being exposed by publishing a video somewhat apologizing but also accusing The New Yorker of having essentially smeared him.
Listen:
“With everything that’s happening in the world, I’m aware even talking about this now feels so trivial,” he said in the video. “But being accused of ‘faking racism’ is not trivial. It’s very serious, and it demands an explanation … To everyone who read that article, I want to answer the biggest question that’s probably on your mind: Is Hasan Minhaj secretly a psycho? Underneath all that pomp, is Hasan Minhaj just a con artist who uses fake racism and Islamophobia to advance his career? Because after reading that article, I would also think that.”
“I just want to say to anyone who felt betrayed or hurt by my stand-up, I am sorry. I made artistic choices to express myself and drive home larger issues affecting me and my community, and I feel horrible that I let people down. The reason I feel horrible is because I’m not a psycho. But this New Yorker article definitely made me look like one. It was so needlessly misleading, not just about my stand-up, but also about me as a person. The truth is, racism, FBI surveillance and the threats to my family happened. And I said this on the record,” he added.
The New Yorker responded to the video by issuing a statement backing up their original story.
“Hasan Minhaj confirms in this video that he selectively presents information and embellishes to make a point: exactly what we reported,” the statement reads. “Our piece, which includes Minhaj’s perspective at length, was carefully reported and fact-checked.”
“It is based on interviews with more than twenty people, including former Patriot Act and Daily Show staffers; members of Minhaj’s security team; and people who have been the subject of his standup work, including the former F.B.I. informant ‘Brother Eric’ and the woman at the center of his prom-rejection story. We stand by our story.”
Here’s our official statement. I stand by the story and encourage people to read it in full. https://t.co/nDudet3lST pic.twitter.com/QqPzc9njT3
— Clare Malone (@ClareMalone) October 26, 2023
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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