July 24 (UPI) — A Georgia state lawmaker appeared on a TV show where he dropped his pants and screamed out racist and homophobic slurs in what he supposedly thought were tactics that would help ward off a terrorist attack.
Georgia state Rep. Jason Spencer, a Republican, appeared on Showtime’s Who is America, a show where comedian Sacha Baron Cohen dupes political figures. In Spencer’s case, the Georgia lawmaker believed Cohen to be an Israeli TV host and former Mossad agent who wanted to teach him about tactics to ward off Islamic terrorists.
Cohen then tells Spencer of various ways to repel attackers, including screaming out the “n-word,” doing a mock Chinese accent to sneak a selfie stick under a woman’s burqa to take a photo to spot their genitalia and pressing his bare buttocks against a suspected terrorist while screaming, “I’ll make you a homosexual!”
Spencer performs all the tasks with enthusiasm in the 5-minute clip released by Showtime on Monday.
Spencer apologized for the “ridiculously ugly episode,” but blamed Cohen for tricking him and taking advantage of his fears that he would be attacked after he reportedly received death threats after introducing a bill to ban burqas last year.
“Now, the fears I already had became more intensified as the reality of my family being targeted by a similar, deranged, would-be assassin became even more possible,” Spencer said in a statement. “Sacha Baron Cohen and his associates took advantage of my paralyzing fear that my family would be attacked. In posing as an Israeli Agent, he pretended to offer self-defense exercises. As uncomfortable as I was to participate, I agreed to, understanding that these ‘techniques’ were meant to help me and others fend off what I believed was an inevitable attack.”
So far, Spencer has refused to step down. And last week, in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he was defiant — threatening to sue Showtime and proclaiming that the antics of “Hollywood liberals” are why Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election.
Spencer lost his party’s primary in May, but remains in office until November.
