Hasan Minhaj prepares for 2024 presidential election with new interview series on YouTube

Hasan Minhaj‘s latest career move is taking him to YouTube. The comedian and political commentator is the star of Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know, a series that will see its titular host interview politicians ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Minhaj’s guest in the premiere episode of Doesn’t Know is Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Senator who entered the president race in 2020. After describing Warren as an “intellectual athlete” and likening her anti-corporate vigilance to the sports stars of House of Highlights, Minhaj pressed her on several key issues, including the advanced age of President Joe Biden.

“With the 2024 election just months away, the Dems are in big trouble and it’s prompted some tough questions from voters like ‘How old is too old to be President?’, ‘How dumb is too dumb to be a democracy?’ and ‘How the fuck are members of Congress still allowed to trade stock?’,” Minhaj said at the beginning of his first Doesn’t Know episode.

Minhaj is making moves on YouTube four years after the cancellation of his Netflix 

series Patriot Act. Minhaj’s talk show received critical acclaim, but it was saddled with allegations of a toxic work environment. The former Daily Show correspondent was then rumored to return to the Comedy Central program as its new host, but factual inaccuracies in his comedy specials derailed that plan.

Doesn’t Know looks to offer all of the meat of Patriot Act without the drama. Co-creator Prashanth Venkataramanujam and showrunner both worked on Minhaj’s Netflix series. The comedian also has a built-in audience on YouTube thanks to previous videos, including a widely-shared interview with President Barack Obama.

YouTube is already a hotbed for political content, and that trend is boosting some channels ahead of the upcoming U.S. election. Comedy Central has gotten more than ten million views on some of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show monologues, and there’s still four months until November. As the chaos of election season heats up, Minhaj will be primed to pick up significant traffic alongside his former boss.