Sacha Baron Cohen's Showtime TV Disruptive

Provocative British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s new television show is making headlines in the United States even before its first episode is aired, with conservative figures Sarah Palin and Joe Walsh saying they were duped by him, according to Reuters.

“Who is America?”, due to launch on Sunday on cable channel Showtime, has been shrouded in secrecy apart from a trailer showing former U.S. defense secretary Dick Cheney signing a large bottle described as a water-boarding kit.

The seven-episode series marks Baron Cohen’s first television project in a decade.

Palin, the 2008 U.S. vice-presidential candidate, says she was tricked into an interview, ostensibly about American veterans, by a person dressed as a disabled U.S. serviceman.

Former U.S. Republican congressman Joe Walsh, now a conservative talk radio host, said he was persuaded to do an interview on Israel. Walsh also called for a boycott of Showtime, a unit of CBS.

I was rushed to the studio, production was a mess, I sat down and we started talking pro-Israel stuff, Israeli defense, and then out of left field the interviewer starts talking about how children should defend themselves against terrorist attacks. #BoycottShowtime pic.twitter.com/kdwA0h9VyR

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) July 11, 2018

Showtime had no comment on Wednesday on the accounts by Palin and Walsh and has declined to give details of the series, or who will be appearing.


“I join a long list of American public personalities who have fallen victim to the evil, exploitive, sick “humor” of the British “comedian” Sacha Baron Cohen,” Palin wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

Palin said a man she believed to be Cohen “heavily disguised himself as a disabled U.S. Veteran, fake wheelchair and all ... I sat through a long “interview” full of Hollywoodism’s disrespect and sarcasm - but finally had enough and literally, physically removed my mic and walked out.”