Jason Spencer, a Republican state lawmaker in Georgia, screams the N-word, exposes himself, and mocks Asian tourists during a segment that aired on Sunday as part of Sacha Baron Cohen‘s Who is America? series on Showtime.
In the video, Cohen pretends to be “Col. Erran Morad,” a former officer in Mossad. Cohen convinced Spencer to be part of an anti-terrorism “training video.”
Spencer partakes in a number of racist and homophobic acts in the video.
Early on, he listens to Cohen say they can “spot the difference” between a woman in a Burka and a “terrorist in a Burka” by using a selfie stick and taking pictures underneath the burka. In 2016, Spencer introduced a bill that would make it illegal for women to wear burkas, hijabs, or niqabs in public.
When Cohen says to “pretend like a Chinese tourist,” Spencer takes the selfie stick and begins rattling off a line of nonsensical racist words in a mocking Asian accent in between real words like “sushi,” “konichiwa,” “red dragon,” and city names like Beijing and Hong Kong.
Later, Cohen says he can teach the Georgia lawmaker how to stop someone from a “kidnapping by ISIS” by shouting the N-word, which he does loudly.
Toward the end of the video, Cohen convinces Spencer to take off his pants and shout “America” while pushing his buttocks into someone.
“I’ll touch you, I’ll make you a homosexual!” Spencer says, running with his pants down. “You drop that gun right now. USA! USA!”
Last week Spencer, like others before him, admitted he had been tricked by Cohen and said he was told the video was “intended to be an educational aid to train elected officials who may be targeted by terrorists.”
“They exploited my state of mind for profit and notoriety,” he said in a statement posted online by New York Times writer Sopan Deb. “This media company’s deceptive and fraudulent behavior is exactly why President Donald Trump was elected.”
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) said on Monday that Spencer’s remarks on the show were “appalling and offensive.”
“The actions and language used by Jason Spencer are appalling and offensive. There is no excuse for this type of behavior, ever, and I am saddened and disgusted by it,” he wrote on Twitter.
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