Sacha Baron Cohen dupes US gun advocates into endorsing weapons for toddlers

After some world class hype last week, Sacha Baron Cohen’s new series Who Is America? landed in the US last night, and appeared to deliver on its promise to make a mockery of US politics.

In a difficult-to-watch extended clip form the show, Cohen unleashes his new character Col. Erran Morad, a former Israeli soldier, on congressmen and lobbyists, and succeeds in getting them to endorse a new initiative called ‘Kinderguardians’.

It involves arming children – rather than the suggested teachers – in schools, so that they can protect them against mass shootings.

And it’s stunning how little encouragement some people needed.

The former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and Representative Dana Rohrabacher from California endorsed the plans, to put ‘guns in the hands of talented children or highly-trained pre-schoolers’.

But no one took to the scheme more readily than Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defence League, a lobbyist and pundit who regularly appears on network TV to defend gun rights.

He is fooled into co-presenting a segment in which he introduces automatic firearms buried in soft toys, like the Puppy Pistol and the Uzi-corn, even singing a Sesame Street-eqsue song about aiming for the ‘head, shoulders, not the toes’.

US representative Joe Walsh, who was also duped, has already admitted he got played, but has tried to peddle back on the embarrassment of it all, appearing to defend himself saying he was distracted by being given an award.

Former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin and Republican nominee Roy Moore have also revealed they were targeted by the comedian for a forthcoming episode, along with Bernie Sanders.

Palin called the British comedian ‘truly sick’ for the prank.

The first episode of the show airs in Channel 4 tonight, at 10pm.

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