Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen may have fooled Republicans into supporting ridiculous parodies of their views for his “Who Is America?” series on Showtime, but the same cannot be said of an actual gun store owner in Riverside, California. He says he immediately understood that Cohen was “full of shit.”
Fox 11 obtained surveillance video from a gun store called Warrior One Guns & Ammo, showing an absurdly disguised Cohen.
Store owner Norris Sweidan said that Cohen showed up in Feb. 2017 and said he was a Hungarian immigrant interested in buying a gun. Sweidan said that the “moment his words came out of his mouth I was like this guy is full of shit.”
Sweidan said it was obvious to him from the start that Cohen was not a Hungarian immigrant.
“[T]ight ass leather pants, a beard, it just didn’t fit,” he said. “And I just kept looking at the guy and I was like you’re Borat, as soon as I said that his eyes just looked at me like, and he did a turn right out the door.”
The camera crew only added to Sweidan’s suspicions. He said that when Cohen bolted the camera crew stayed behind and wasn’t giving them an answer about what they were doing there.
“We basically told them to get the fuck out, you guys are all full of shit, have a great day, get out,” he said. He also criticized the aforementioned Republican gun advocates who fell for Cohen’s bunnies-on-guns skit: “You’ve got some gun advocate holding a bunny on some gun, if you’re a gun advocate, what the fuck are you doing holding a gun with a bunny on it, really?”
Cohen has certainly grabbed headlines for his stunts, but in at least one case people wondered if he went too far.
Former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin said Cohen posed as a wounded veteran to get an interview with her, raising the question if he violated the Stolen Valor Act of 2013. Showtime, however, has disputed this version of events.
[Image via Fox 11 screengrab]
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