Sacha Baron Cohen’s new Showtime series, “Who Is America?,” caused a stir before its premiere last week, as several Republican politicians felt the need to get ahead of the show in explaining how Cohen “duped” them to appear on it.
The former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the former congressman Joe Walsh, and the former US Senate candidate Roy Moore were among those who preceded the show’s premiere with statements explaining their appearances on the series and criticizing Cohen.
In the show’s first episode, Cohen, disguised as an Israeli “anti-terror expert,” roped several Republican congressmen and former elected officials into voicing their support for a program that would arm toddlers with guns to prevent school shootings.
This week, the former vice president Dick Cheney and broadcast journalist Ted Koppel were among the notable people who appeared on the show as unsuspecting guests.
Before the show’s premiere last week, Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report tweeted a list of political and media figures he said Cohen had “finked” for the series, including Palin, Howard Dean, and David Patreus, whom we can expect to see in the show’s subsequent five episodes.
Here are the notable people and politicians who have appeared on “Who Is America?” so far:
Sen. Bernie Sanders
The show’s first episode began with Cohen interviewing Sanders, the Vermont senator who was a Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, as a right-wing conspiracy theorist character named Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr.
Sanders, with a perplexed expression, politely dodged and shut down various absurd questions on income inequality and other topics from Cohen’s Ruddick.
Larry Pratt, executive director emeritus of Gun Owners of America
In the strongest segment on Sunday’s episode, Cohen’s Israeli “anti-terror expert” character, Col. Erran Morad, introduced Pratt and several other conservative political figures to a fake program called “Kinderguardians” that would arm children as young as 3.
Pratt endorsed the program and, reading off a teleprompter, said: “Toddlers are pure, uncorrupted by fake news or homosexuality. They don’t care if it’s politically correct to shoot a mentally deranged gunman. They’ll just do it.”
Florida congressman Matt Gaetz
Cohen’s Morad character interviewed Gaetz for the segment on arming toddlers, but Gaetz wisely sidestepped the topic, saying, “Typically members of Congress don’t just hear a story about a program and then indicate whether they support it or not.”
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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