Earlier this week, it was announced that Jon Stewart is returning to The Daily Show to host on Monday nights through the election year, as well as executive produce. Between this and the Comedy Central program’s various correspondents hosting Tuesday through Thursday, this means that the search for a permanent host following Trevor Noah’s exit in December 2022 has been pushed back for roughly another year. That said, more details have now emerged about close Hasan Minhaj came to landing the host gig prior to Stewart’s recruitment.
Minhaj, who was a correspondent on The Daily Show from 2014 to 2018, and guest hosted on the week of February 27, 2023, was reportedly the frontrunner to succeed Noah at the beginning of August 2023. According to THR, the deal for him to become the new host was “all but done by late summer,” and had the hiring gone through, this would have marked Minhaj’s return the TV talk show host space following the cancellation of his Netflix show Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj in 2020. So what went wrong?
