‘Daily Show’ Correspondent Aasif Mandvi: Why Trevor Noah Should Get Off Social Media Altogether

Though Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi thinks that the backlash over Trevor Noah’s archival tweets is “much ado about nothing,” he also advises that once Noah officially takes over for Jon Stewart, the best strategy may be to stop tweeting altogether.

“There’s a reason why Jon Stewart stays off social media,” the correspondent, author and actor told The Hollywood Reporter after a discussion at LinkedIn’s New York City offices on Tuesday night. “He also doesn’t need to be on social media. Here’s the thing: Once Trevor Noah takes the chair of The Daily Show, he’s going to have a huge platform to say all kinds of things that he wants to say. … Jon Stewart actually said once, ‘I don’t need to be on Twitter or Facebook because I’m on television four nights a week.'”

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So what does he think of Comedy Central’s newly diverse lineup? “Let’s be fair. … Trevor Noah is half white,” he told THR. “I’m sure his white half will have a lot to say about what ends up on The Daily Show!”

Kidding aside, “all of the hosts have been white up until now. Now that we have two black hosts back-to-back, it suddenly becomes a conversation point,” he said. “What I’m excited about in terms of Trevor is that because he has a more global perspective it will make the Daily Show a more global show. … Not to say that there is anything wrong with the way it is, but he does bring a more international voice. I think that’s good.”

Interviewed by LinkedIn’s executive editor Dan Roth at the company’s offices in the Empire State Building, Mandvi talked about his soon-to-be released series, Halal in the Family — a satirical sitcom that originated as a bit on The Daily Show and was funded, in part, by money raised from a successful Indiegogo campaign — which aims to show Americans in “Oklahoma and Kansas” a different perspective from the way Muslims are typically portrayed on the news.

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As for the accusations by some social media users that Noah’s tweets reveal anti-Semitic prejudices, Mandvi said during the panel that we’ll also have to take a wait-and-see approach. In this respect, he has a fail-proof metric: “Look, once a month, we have Katz’s Deli deliver food for the show. If he cancels that, he’s anti-Semitic,” he laughed. “If we don’t get the Katz’s Deli, he hates Jews.”

Watch a clip from the panel below.