Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and current personal lawyer to U.S. President Donald Trump, took to Twitter yesterday to respond to criticism he received after appearing to touch his genitals during a scene from Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. The scene, in which Giuliani appears with an actress who told him she was 15 years old at the time, raised eyebrows when Guiliani, reclining on a bed, appeared to be touching himself. He fired back to say that the scene was “entirely fabricated” on Twitter, and a number of prominent American conservative voices lined up to defend Giuliani against criticism.
The Borat films are the brainchild of Sacha Baron Cohen, who became famous as the character Ali G, whose outlandish behavior and surprising questions would shock and embarrass guests on Da Ali G Show. Cohen, who has said that the motto for his particular brand of ambush TV is “always go slightly too far,” has not yet commented on the controversy.
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“The Borat video is a complete fabrication. I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment,” Giuliani tweeted last night. “At no time before, during, or after the interview was I ever inappropriate. If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise he is a stone-cold liar.”
In addition to Ali G and Borat, Cohen starred in the series Who Is America?, which he said aimed to give a polarized country insight into other Americans not like the viewer. A number of high-profile politicians, mostly conservative, were embarrassed on the show when they agreed to appear without really understanding how Cohen’s schtick works.
In the film, Cohen’s Borat storms into the room and implies that Giuliani is having an inappropriate momentwith the woman playing his teenage daughter. Wearing a pink nightie, he offers himself to Giuliani rather than the girl, but is rebuffed. Giuliani leaves the hotel room in the ensuing chao,s as Borat and his onscreen daughter argue.
“I only later realized it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen,” Giuliani told Page Six recently. “I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me.”
During a radio interview, Giuliani said that he believed the interview was a “hit job” on him because of his attacks on Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic Presidential hopeful Joe Biden, although the interview was filmed in July and the Borat sequel’s release date was set at the beginning of October, before Giuliani began leaking information obtained from a laptop alleged to have belonged to Biden.
You can see Borat Subsequent Moviefilm on Amazon Prime this weekend.
