Sacha Baron Cohen brought down the house at the Kennedy Centers Honor ceremony for U2 on Sunday night. Despite claims that he’s been thinking about retiring the character, Cohen dusted off Borat and roasted Kanye West‘s descent into full-blown anti-Semitism. The rapper recently made a wild appearance on Infowars where he proceeded to rant about his love for Hitler and Nazis, which managed to freak out Alex Jones, so that says a lot right there.
After taking the Kennedy Center stage as Borat, Cohen started taking jabs at West. While the Borat reprisal was a surprise, Cohen taking on anti-Semitism is not. He’s been a vocal critic of social media’s amplification of hate, and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm took several shots at antisemitic conspiracy theories. Via The Guardian:
“Before I proceed, I will say I am very upset about the antisemitism in US and A. It not fair. Kazakhstan is No 1 Jew-crushing nation. Stop stealing our hobby. Stop the steal! Stop the steal!” Some guests burst into laughter while others sat in uncomfortable silence.
He continued: “Your Kanye, he tried to move to Kazakhstan and even changed his name to Kazakhstanye West. But we said: No, he too antisemitic, even for us.”
Cohen also made sure to throw a few barbs at Donald Trump, who’s been embroiled in controversy ever since dining with West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes over the Thanksgiving holiday. Borat reportedly began performing the U2 hit “With or Without You,” but he changed to lyrics to “With or Without Jews,” as the crowd squirmed.
“What’s the problem? They loved this at Mar-a-Lago,” Borat quipped. “They chose Without Jews.”
(Via The Guardian)