Comedian Hasan Minhaj has admitted to inventing several first-person tales of facing discrimination — including a racist attack on his daughter — that undergird his standup comedy act and his politically-themed TV shows.
Minhaj, born in 1985 in the United States to Muslim Indian immigrants, made a name for himself on The Daily Show and his own Netflix comedy series, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj. He won a Peabody Award in 2018 for the short-lived (2018-2020) Netflix series.
The comedian has become a favorite among left-wingers for skewering America as a hateful and inherently racist country, often with personal stories of discrimination against him and his family.
Minhaj — who joined Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Steward in 2014 — made headlines as host of the 2017 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner (WHCD), where he ripped President Donald Trump, calling him the “liar-in-chief” and “the orange man behind the Muslim ban.”
His comedy was even panned by Saudi Arabian officials, who forced Netflix to remove one of his 2019 episodes of Patriot Act that criticized the Kingdom over the Jamal Khashoggi incident.
Minhaj relays several stories during his show. To name a few, he has claimed that a white girl refused to go to a high school homecoming dance with him, tells the tale of a “brother Eric” who infiltrated a mosque for the FBI, and even told the harrowing tale of an envelope with “white powder” in it spilling all over his daughter.
He also tells the story of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner arrogantly sitting in a chair reserved for a formerly imprisoned Saudi activist at a Time 100 gala in 2019. He now admits that never happened.
At long last, Minhaj has admitted that none of these stories of discrimination ever happened, though he tells them on stage and on TV as if they are real.
Hellbound and Down 