Do we like Hasan Minhaj?
Our score: 6 out of 10. Nothing harmful in his own words turned up, but he admitted making up stand-up stories and former staff aired complaints about his old show's workplace.
Hasan Minhaj made his name as a Daily Show correspondent, then built a Netflix career on stand-up and the weekly show Patriot Act. By 2023 he had interviewed Barack Obama and was reportedly on the shortlist to host The Daily Show. Then a magazine profile landed and the wheels came off.
In September 2023 The New Yorker published a profile, "Hasan Minhaj's Emotional Truths". In it he admitted some stories he told on stage weren't true: the white-powder envelope that wasn't anthrax, and an FBI-informant story about being slammed on a car bonnet. He defended it as "emotional truth" and said the punchline justified the made-up setup. A month later he posted a 20-minute video apologising to people who felt “betrayed or hurt”, while The New Yorker said the video confirmed its reporting.
It cost him. Minhaj has confirmed he was set to be the full-time Daily Show host, and says the backlash over the embellished stories ended it. His own summary: “That's part of showbiz.” That's a fairly breezy way to describe losing the biggest job in his field because of stories he admitted making up.
The other blot is older. In September 2020 TBS News reported that former Patriot Act staff alleged a toxic workplace, particularly for women of colour. A producer who first raised it on Twitter said she felt “humiliated and gaslit, targeted and ignored”. The report carried no statement from Minhaj or Netflix, so these remain allegations, but the show was cancelled abruptly soon after.
On the harm test, the reporting we could open points the other way from the usual slide. We found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ or trans people, no anti-vax or climate-denial claims and no conspiracy talk from him. The criticism of him is about truthfulness, and that is a separate question. The record on who he's working with lately was thin in what we could open, so call it a pass on the evidence we have.
Nothing new on him lately that we could confirm from solid sources. In a February 2025 Esquire interview he said “Don't fact-check comedy.” and “I want to engage in the world in good faith.” He also called his earlier all-or-nothing thinking “a little insufferable”. That reads as a bloke who has learned something, though he still defends the craft that got him in trouble.