Sarah Palin isn’t backing down. The former Republican vice presidential candidate spoke out against Sacha Baron Cohen days after claiming he “duped” her into participating in a spoof interview.
“It was proposed to me as a legitimate interview to speak about veterans’ issues and our military and current events to a new audience,” Palin, 54, said on Good Morning America on Friday, July 13. “It was supposed to be this big time Showtime documentary and it was passed on to me by a speakers’ bureau, which, you know, I would assume had done some vetting.”
The former Alaska governor then recalled the moment when she realized that the interview wasn’t what she expected. “He started showing me these graphs and statistics that had, like, typos in ‘em and just didn’t quite look right, and part of this propaganda, this data that he was showing me, had something to do with sex changes and transgenderism and he brought up Chelsea Clinton and said she was a recipient of a government-funded sex change,” she claimed. “It just got worse and worse and worse as the minutes went on in this bizarre, really embarrassing, humiliating interview.”
Eventually, Palin had enough. “I took off my mic and I walked out,” she said. “Since then, nobody has returned my calls. They had given us fake names as to producers and anybody involved in the show. Nobody has taken me up on my offer for them to donate the proceeds from this show to veterans’ organizations that truly support and respect our vets.”
The politician first spoke out about the alleged incident in a lengthy Facebook post on Tuesday, July 10. She claimed that she and one of her daughters “were asked to travel across the country” to meet with the Borat actor, 46, whom allegedly “heavily disgusted himself as a disabled U.S. veteran” for his upcoming Showtime series, Who Is America? Cohen claimed via his character’s Twitter account on Thursday, July 12, that he “did NOT say I was a War Vet.”
In response to the comedian’s rebuttal, Palin said on GMA, “He thinks this kind of stuff is funny, and mocking the disabled and mocking and belittling our vets with his portrayal, in my book, it’s not funny,” she said. “This actor, this comedian, whomever he is, he’s a proven liar. Nobody can believe a word he’s saying now as to his rebuttal.”
Radio host Joe Walsh and veteran journalist Ted Koppel are among several other people who have since accused Cohen of duping them into doing interviews.
Cohen and Showtime did not respond to Us Weekly’s requests for comment.
