Comedy Central defends Trevor Noah: 'Unfair' to judge

Comedy Central is standing by its new Daily Show host.

The network issued a statement Tuesday afternoon following numerous reports about South African-born comedian Trevor Noah’s history of writing tweets that many found to be insensitive, particularly toward Jews, as well as sexist.

“Like many comedians, Trevor Noah pushes boundaries; he is provocative and spares no one, himself included,” Comedy Central said in the statement. “To judge him or his comedy based on a handful of jokes is unfair. Trevor is a talented comedian with a bright future at Comedy Central.”

Noah was announced Monday as the network’s choice to take over The Daily Show from outgoing host Jon Stewart. The comic was considered a surprising choice as he’s not very well known in America and had only appeared on the show three times. Within hours, a controversy began to develop over his previous statements on his Twitter account, where he’s accumulated about 2 million followers. Some of the statements go as back as far as 2009.

Noah himself seemed to respond to the flap last night, tweeting, “Twitter does not have enough characters to respond to all the characters on Twitter.” The tweet was later deleted.