Hasan Minhaj is ready to laugh about it all.
At the Netflix Is a Joke comedy festival on Thursday, Minhaj hosted a showcase highlighting various comedians. At the end of the lineup was Ronny Chieng, who joked, “I’m surprised that Hasan’s able to do this show. I guess ‘cancelling’ is not what it used to be.”
He was referring to a controversy sparked by a September story in the New Yorker that aimed to fact-check Minhaj’s stand-up comedy. The month before, PvNew had exclusively reported that he was the frontrunner to replace Trevor Noah as host of “The Daily Show,” but he lost the job after the scandal arose. Instead, famed host Jon Stewart returned for Monday night episodes, while other correspondents anchor for the rest of the week.
On Thursday, Minhaj pretended to heckle Chieng from the crowd, calling out, “You planted that story about me!” before joining him onstage: “Who the fuck fact-checks stand-up comedy? only Ronny Chieng would set me up with some fucking mouth-breathing journalist,” he said. “It was you.”
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The pair told the story of how they first met as “Daily Show” correspondents in 2015, at which point Minhaj brought up the hosting job. When Chieng first said the show’s name, Minhaj retorted, “A job you fucked me out of.”
“We’ve all failed in our lives, but have you ever failed so bad, you bring back Jon Stewart?” he continued. “I saved a dying institution. You’re welcome.”
He was right. Stewart’s return has reinvigorated “The Daily Show,” quickly bringing the franchise to viewership heights it hadn’t reached since he left in 2015.
The New Yorker article scrutinized several stories from Minhaj’s comedy specials, which led him to admit that he had embellished some details from his life, though he maintained that his stories were all based on “emotional truths.” Among the stories in question was one from his 2023 special “The King’s Jester” in which Minhaj said he received a letter containing a white powder that spilled onto his young daughter and rushed her to the hospital to test for anthrax; in reality, he did receive the letter and consider the possibility of anthrax, but the powder never touched his daughter and he didn’t have it tested. He later released a video apologizing to “anyone who felt betrayed or hurt” while also breaking down what he found “needlessly misleading” about the article.
Minhaj is currently on a stand-up tour titled “Off With His Head,” with a special set to tape this summer.
