Former Rep. ‘duped’ in backing armed kids
Former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh joined Sarah Palin and Roy Moore in decrying Sacha Baron Cohen’s new satire series “Who Is America?” during an interview Saturday on CNN.
Mr. Cohen is “a funny guy because he gets people to say stupid things,” Mr. Walsh told the network. “He gets people to say stupid things because he lies to them.”
Mr. Walsh was one of the many politicians and pundits who Mr. Cohen fooled in the Showtime comedy’s premiere. The conservative talk-show host appeared in the show’s final segment called “KILL OR BE KILLED” in which Mr. Cohen — as fake Israeli “antiterror expert” Col. Erran Morad — offers a “solution” to America’s epidemic of school shootings.
“The NRA wants to arm the teachers. This is crazy. They should be arming the children,” Mr. Cohen as Morad says, before introducing his (fake) new program called “Kinder guardians.” The program would arm children as young as 3 and train them to use the weapons against “naughty men.”
During the segment, Cohen-as-Morad teams with staunch gun rights activist and president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, Philip Van Cleave, to create a partially animated children’s video, replete with gunimals (guns that look like stuffed animals) and even a nursery rhyme about the best part of the body to strike (”Aim at the head, shoulders, not the toes, not the toes,” Mr. Van Cleave sings, punctuated by Cohen-as-Morad rhythmically yelling “fire!”).
Cohen-as-Morad then heads to Washington, D.C., to find political support for his program. Several prominent members of the right give just that, including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., along with former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott. It’s here that he encounters Mr. Walsh, who enthusiastically backs the program.
“The intensive threeweek Kinder guardian course introduces specially selected children from 12 to 4 years old to pistols, rifles, semiautomatics and a rudimentary knowledge of mortars,” Mr. Walsh says directly into the camera. “In less than a month — less than a month — a firstgrader can become a first grenade-er.”
“Happy shooting, kids,” he adds. It’s the last line in the show.
As Mr. Walsh explained on CNN, Mr. Cohen duped him by telling him that he was “getting an award from some Israeli TV station because I’m a great supporter of Israel.”
“After they conducted an interview, they had me read off of a teleprompter talking about some of the innovative products that Israel invented,” Mr. Walsh explained. “Then they had me read about this 4-year-old child in Israel who, when a terrorist entered his classroom, somehow he grabbed the terrorist’s gun and held the terrorist at bay. And that was an example of how Israel trains and arms preschool kids on how to use firearms, and boy shouldn’t wedo that in America?”
He said as he read it, he thought, “Well, this is kind of crazy, but it is Israel and Israel is strong on defense.”