Late night hosts have sympathy for Brad Parscale, ponder why Trump escaped the big Twitter hack

Late night hosts on Trump's campaign shakeup
(Image credit: Screenshots/YouTube/The Daily Show/The Late Show/The Tonight Show/Late Night)

Among the heap of "troubling pandemic news," Stephen Colbert said on Thursday's Late Show, "yesterday we learned that Russian hackers have launched cyberattacks on COVID-19 research centers. So the Russians are getting America's coronavirus data? Could they share it with us?" The Russian spies are actually trying to steal COVID-19 vaccine research, he explained, "but for once, Russia is the second-biggest hacking story of the day, because yesterday, major Twitter accounts were hacked in a bitcoin scam. Now, if you're not familiar, a 'bitcoin scam' is anything involving bitcoin."

President Trump is getting crushed in the polls by Joe Biden, Colbert said, but "I won't feel confident Biden has won this thing until he's giving his first State of the Union — and even then part of me will be thinking: 'Comey could still f--- this up.'"

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"A new poll finds that Trump's approval rating has hit an all-time low of 36 percent," Jimmy Fallon said at The Tonight Show. "I guess that explains why Trump has decided to shake things up," replacing campaign manager Brad Parscale. "Meanwhile, everyone else in the campaign is thinking, 'Yeah, he was the problem,'" he joked. The Twitter hackers targeted Biden, Barack Obama, and Jeff Bezos, among other blue checkmarks, Fallon said. "You know Trump's furious because they attacked the biggest accounts on Twitter and didn't even include him."

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"Twitter released a statement saying that luckily, the president's Twitter account was not hacked — but how would they know?" Trevor Noah asked on The Daily Show. "I mean, this is the same guy who tweets about beans, Iran, and the Confederacy in the span of 10 minutes. He pre-hacks himself."

Also, "Donald Trump's campaign isn't struggling because of his campaign manager, it's struggling because Donald Trump is the candidate," Noah said. So Parscale is clearly "a scapegoat," but he should still be proud, "because at this point, getting out of the Trump campaign without getting into prison, that's an achievement."

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"Trump's campaign is sputtering because the coronavirus crisis isn't a problem Trump can just BS his way out of," and governing "is just not in his skill set," Seth Meyers said at Late Night. But Trump didn't just fire Parscale, he's also "honing in on two key re-election strategies: less testing and more racism."

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Trump also suggested dogs might vote illegally, and The Late Show turned that into a commercial. Watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.