Trevor Noah Asked Staff to Delete Offensive Tweets of New Hires

New correspondents for The Daily Show had their tweets evaluated by the show’s staff at the direction of new host Trevor Noah.

Eager to avoid a similar controversy to the one he experienced when he was announced as Jon Stewart’s hand-picked successor in March, the 31-year-old South African comedian told The New York Times this week, “when we hired the new correspondents at the show, they asked me, ‘Have we checked their social media?’”

Noah came under fire when it was announced he would take over the show, after his Twitter account was found to be full of old jokes, including ones that were jokes aimed at gays, Asians, overweight people, and Jews.
https://twitter.com/tiffanycli/status/582888256104083456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

South Africans know how to recycle like israel knows how to be peaceful.

— Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) June 2, 2010

"Oh yeah the weekend. People are gonna get drunk & think that I'm sexy!" – fat chicks everywhere.

— Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) October 14, 2011

Almost bumped a Jewish kid crossing the road. He didn't look b4 crossing but I still would hav felt so bad in my german car!

— Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) September 18, 2009

“I said, ‘This is a good exercise: You go through every single tweet and tell me what you think we should get rid of,’” Noah told the Times.

Noah said staff members came back to him with tweets, and were attempting to interpret which ones might come off as offensive.

“I don’t know, is this offensive? Is this not offensive? Is this bad?” Exactly. You do not know what may or may not offend somebody,” said the host.

Trevor told the paper he does not feel bad for posting the jokes on his Twitter page because they are an example of how he has grown as a person.

“People go, ‘Trevor, you should clean your tweets.’ I go, I cleaned my life — I tried to grow as a human being. Someone goes, “Yeah, but you wrote this in 2009.” I go, well, thank God I didn’t write it in 2015. That to me is progress.”

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah will debut on Comedy Central on Sept. 28.