How Sacha Baron Cohen deceived the leaders of the nation

How does Sacha Baron Cohen continue to silence American leaders for his fictitious interviews?

Email correspondence between Cohen's team and former representative Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), Obtained by POLITICO and reproduced here, offers some answers.

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Fifteen years after "Da Ali G Show" cheated prominent politicians to sit down for embarrassing television interviews, the British comedian's new show is again wreaking havoc in American politics. Voters may rightly wonder how the people who govern them continue to fall on Cohen's wiles.

In the case of Walsh, Cohen's team used fake identities and dummy websites and concocted media opportunities over the course of several months. He also relied on flattery, intrigue and the disarming use of the word "freedom" to remind the former congressman in an appearance on television in which he endorsed arming young children with heavy weapons.

Walsh was among the four current and former Republican members of Congress who approved a bogus program to provide firearms training to preschool children in interviews with Cohen, who posed as an anti-terrorism expert Israeli named Erran Morad for his new Showtime Last October, a woman who named Ashley Winthrop sent an email to Walsh on behalf of the production company invented First Liberty Pictures and invited him to be interviewed for a series of "docu-style" on terrorism. to be broadcast on Israeli television. "For the appearance of the camera," Winthrop proposed, Walsh "would meet a gentleman from Israel who … has developed unique anti-extremist techniques which very few in the world are aware of."

As he turned These unique and little-known techniques included a program invented to train three-year-olds to use semi-automatic rifles and provide "a rudimentary knowledge of mortars".

But Walsh, who is now a radio show host, would not learn from this fictitious gun program for several months. Walsh's wife, Helene, who manages her schedule, responded to the expressed interest, but a proposed interview in December failed.

Undeterred, Cohen's team attempted another tactic: flattery.

In February, Walsh received an investigation from "Alexis Rothe" of fictional television Yerushalayim. In an email, "Rothe" informed Walsh that he had been named to the "70 to 70" list of Israel in honor of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the nation.

"The people of Israel understand that they owe their very existence to the unwavering support of powerful personalities like MP Joe Walsh," she writes. "We've already been with Tony Blair, Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison, Bono and Steven Spielberg."

This time, the former congressman managed to get the date of the proposed interview to work.

Unfortunately for the Walsh, they apparently forgot about Ronald Reagan's dictum, "Trust but Verification."

Walsh's wife verified the domain of the website from which Alexis sent it, yerushalayimtv.com, which is now gone but was then live and appeared to be listing television content in Hebrew.

"Since we do not read Hebrew, we could not verify ourselves," she told POLITICO.

Helene Walsh wrote to "Rothe" to ask: "Could you please send me the web site (for English) for Yerushaleyim TV? I would like to check the station / company / content. "

The Cohen team ignored the request, but Walsh went ahead and sat for an interview anyway. In a Washington studio at the end of February, Cohen's team presented to the former congressman a real statuette for his fake award for "significant contributions to the state of the art." # 39; Israel. " Walsh continued to deliver a sincere approval of the small arms plan.

A few days later, the Walsh returned to Chicago and asked the Israeli consulate to take a look at the Yerushalayim site. The consulate told them that the website was fake, and the Walshes contacted a lawyer. The couple considered hiring a private investigator but decided that it was too expensive and resigned himself to waiting for the video's release.

"We should have done more homework," said Helene Walsh.

In addition to Walsh, GOP representatives Joe Wilson of South Carolina and Dana Rohrabacher of California and former Majority Leader in the Trent Lott Senate of Mississippi all supported the program in interviews with Cohen . Just like Larry Pratt, executive director emeritus of Gun Owners of America.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) Sat for an interview but refused to endorse the toddlers' armament.

On Twitter, Walsh clarified that he does not actually support the children's education and took the episode in stride. "It's on me," he tweeted. "Sacha misled me."

Others were less gracious. Former alumna Senate candidate, Roy Moore, threatened to sue after learning that he had been fooled.

And in a Facebook post last week, Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, wrote: "I join a long list of American public figures who have been victims of perverse humor, exploitative and ill of the British "comedian" Sacha Baron Cohen, activated and sponsored by CBS / Showtime. "

In the case of Palin, she wrote that she was contacted via her speakers' bureau and said that she would participate in a historical documentary.

In his post, Palin accused Cohen of portraying himself as a disabled veteran, an accusation Showtime denies, and challenged the creators of the series to donate the proceeds of the program to a charity of veterans.

Meanwhile, in Southern California, Rohrabacher's challenger, Democrat Harley Rouda, is making a campaign number of Rohrabacher's appearance on the show. After the premiere on Sunday night, Rouda issued a statement condemning "Rohrabacher's push to arm the children."

The Rohrabacher office issued its own statement, saying that the congressman does not support the arming of children. "I've talked a lot about training young people at a responsible age in self-defense." At no time did I approve of training toddlers to handle weapons, "said Rohrabacher. "I like good satire, but a good satire must reveal a foundation in the truth.It was a fraud, a sickly fraud."

Cohen also got interviews with Bernie Sanders and Dick Cheney under false pretenses. And according to a tweet from conservative internet editor Matt Drudge, Cohen has cheated former Vermont governor Howard Dean, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, David Petraeus and Ted Koppel.

Cohen has been so successful in deceiving the nation's political elites that viewers can find themselves thinking about the decline of civilization.

Christy Cones, a California art expert who sat for a phony interview with Cohen, certainly is. "We are living in a time of debauchery and decadence that even the Roman Empire could admire," Conti, who also runs a charitable sports foundation, said, adding that "Sacha is a total genius."