Late Night Tackles WikiLeaks
Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers have mixed feelings about Julian Assange's arrest, and his cat
"Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks and Draco Malfoy's biological father, has finally been arrested," Trevor Noah said on Thursday's Daily Show. He showed the video of Assange being dragged out of Ecuador's London embassy. "They carried him out of the embassy like he was an old couch," he cringed. "And by the way, what happened to Assange? In just a few years he went from Bond villain to crowd-surfing Hobbit."
The U.S. immediately unsealed a criminal indictment, "and a lot of people are concerned that by arresting Assange, the government is creating a precedent to lock up journalists who expose government secrets in the future," Noah said. "And you know journalists getting arrested would be [President] Trump's wet dream."
Ecuador also "discovered that hackers make terrible house guests," Noah said, adding that "skateboarding in the hallways of an embassy and stealing their WiFi" made Assange look "like a sh-tty teenager," not a political dissident. Meanwhile, his only companion was his cat, and "the most disturbing thing about the story is somehow not the fact that Assange let it sh-t all over the embassy," Noah said. "No, it's that every day, he dressed that poor thing up in a tie and collar." He jokingly suggesting that might be the real cause of Assange's downfall.
Late Night's Seth Meyers called Assange's new look "Santa Claus with a manifesto," and he was amused that Assange took Ecuador "to court over his cat. Usually people go to court to get restraining orders against their cats."
"Look, you can think Assange is a creep — which he is — and also be worried about what this means for press freedom, but one person who's always been very clear on where he stands on WikiLeaks is Donald Trump," Meyers said — until today. "Seriously, how can you say WikiLeaks is not your 'thing'? Your government just arrested a guy who's organization you repeated praised through the campaign, and you're acting like someone just offered you weed at a party." Meyers also covered Trump's tax dodge and treason claims, and the "dead giveaway" that Michael Avenatti is "bad news." Watch below. Peter Weber