Trevor Noah on Julian Assange: ‘Hackers make terrible houseguests’ | Culture

Trevor Noah

On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah covered the bane of several governments’ existence: the WikiLeaks founder and “Draco Malfoy’s biological father” Julian Assange, who was arrested on Thursday at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Assange, an Australian citizen, is facing extradition to the US for conspiracy to hack into defense department computers back in 2010. “And in 2010, it was really difficult to hack into a defense department computer, because the password was ‘password1’,” Noah joked.

If Assange has been cooped up in the embassy for seven years, Noah asked, why arrest him now? Well, “apparently Ecuador has decided that hackers make terrible houseguests”. According to reports, Assange was begrudged at the embassy for skateboarding through the halls, stealing wifi and not cleaning up after his cat (though he did dress said cat in a tie and collar).

“The most disturbing part of the story is not that Assange allowed [the cat] to shit all over the embassy,” Noah said. “It’s that every day, he dressed that poor thing up in a tie and collar.” There are several photos of Assange’s cat in various menswear get-ups. “Like, if I worked in the Ecuadorian embassy, that would be my sign that Assange is losing it.”

Though Assange has long antagonized powerful people, Noah noted that many are calling the arrest a dangerous precedent for journalists who expose government secrets. Which brought up an interesting dilemma, Noah said. “On the one hand, pretty much everyone hates Assange, partly because he looks like the creepy stepdad in every porno. But on the other hand, many people aren’t happy about him getting arrested.”

But the outcome of Assange’s impending extradition is not the biggest mystery here, he concluded. “It feels like somebody – somebody on the inside – must have done something to sabotage Assange. Someone who he trusted, someone who had a reason to betray him.” Cut to a video of Assange’s cat, ominously dressed as a private eye.

Seth Meyers

On Late Night, Seth Meyers also addressed Assange’s arrest, as the bearded and dazed WikiLeaks founder was “dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy looking like Santa Claus with a manifesto”.

The rough end to his seven-year stay at the embassy was probably related to his terrible manners, Meyers said; the Ecuadorian embassy had recently demanded that Assange pay for his own medical care, clean his bathroom and tend to the wellbeing of his cat. Assange sued the Ecuadorian foreign ministry over the rule changes.

“He took them to court over his cat,” Meyers said. “Usually, people go to court to get restraining orders against their cat.

“Now, 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 about where he stands on WikiLeaks is Donald Trump,” Meyers said. On Thursday, however, the president pretended to know nothing about WikiLeaks despite several past clips in which he declared: “I love WikiLeaks.”

Trump also dodged questions on Thursday about his tax returns. Last week, the House ways and means committee demanded that the IRS release six years’ worth of tax returns from Trump and eight businesses linked to him.

“Of course, it’s hard to find those returns since seven of those businesses went bankrupt years ago,” Meyers joked. “If you want to find the tax returns for Trump Steaks or Trump Vodka, you have to go deep into the IRS basement and look into the box labeled ‘obvious scams’.”

Trump has promised to hand over the returns himself once he is finished being under audit, an excuse Meyers called “obviously fake” since he has been using it since 2016. Plus, a three-year audit isn’t a good look – “If you told someone it took you a week to clean your kitchen, they’d be like, ‘How fucked up was your kitchen?’”

Jimmy Kimmel

Assange’s arrest and possible extradition to the United States is bad news for him, said Jimmy Kimmel, because “if convicted, he faces up to four years as Trump’s next secretary of homeland security”.

Luckily, Assange seems to have one defender: former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson, who tweeted her support for the WikiLeaks founder and called the United Kingdom “America’s bitch”.

“It seems that there’s some kind of secret organization that assigns a C-list celebrity to every cause,” Kimmel observed. “Pamela Anderson, you get WikiLeaks. Dennis Rodman, you’re on North Korea. Steven Seagal, you take Russia. Chuck Norris, you get guns. Jenny McCarthy, vaccines. Tom Arnold, pee tape is yours. Meatloaf, GMOs. Gary Busey – you can have everything else.”

Given that Assange, who was carried on his stomach from the embassy by about six men, appeared to be a shell of his former, Bond villian self, Kimmel surmised that “maybe a change of scenery will be good” for him. “He looks like the kind of guy who cackles at the sky while operating the Tilt-a-Whirl.”

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