Hillary Clinton takes on ‘Borat’ conspiracy theorists
Hillary Clinton is confronting what she calls a “painfully false” and “hurtful” conspiracy theory about her, with the help of none other than the movie character Borat.
What You Need To Know
- In a new “Borat” TV series, Hillary Clinton confronted conspiracy theorists who believe she drinks the blood of children, a patently false and repeatedly debunked conspiracy theory
- “Borat’s American Lockdown & Debunking Borat” tackles conspiracy theories cited by two men Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat character lived with during the pandemic while filming “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”
- In a prerecorded cameo, Clinton told Holleman and Russell it was “hurtful” to know that some people believe the conspiracy theory
- The other episodes look at conspiracy theories involving microchips in vaccines, mail-in ballots, George Soros and more
The former secretary of state appears in an episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Amazon Prime series “Borat’s American Lockdown & Debunking Borat,” which debuted Tuesday.
The seven-part series, mostly of shorts, is a spinoff of the movie “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” In the movie, Cohen, playing the title character, spent five days living with two conspiracy theorists at the height of the COVID-19 lockdown.
The first episode of the new series resembles a reality TV show chronicling the interactions between the fictional and zany Borat and the real-life roommates Jerry Holleman and Jim Russell, who rattle off conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory.
That episode sets the stage for the other six, each of which addresses a specific myth Holleman and Russell believe, tells the story of how the disinformation originated and spread, and then has experts talk directly with the men in an attempt to better educate them.
“The myths and misinformation they shared with Borat fuel a dangerous rhetoric that is tearing apart societies in front of our eyes,” Cohen says in the introduction of the series.
The final episode addresses Clinton and a conspiracy theory involving blood libel, the supposed ritualistic drinking of children’s blood.
“The Clintons are very evil,” Russell tells Borat in the film when they were living together. “Supposedly they torture these kids. Well, what it does is it it gets your adrenaline flowing in their body. Then they take that out of their adrenal glands, and then they drink their blood.”
The claim is linked to a patently false, repeatedly debunked conspiracy theory baselessly spread by QAnon supporters.
In a prerecorded cameo, Clinton told Holleman and Russell it was “hurtful” to know that some people believe the conspiracy theory.
“It’s hurtful not just to me and my family, but to my friends and other people who know that this is not just false but, you know, sometimes painfully false,” she tells the men.
“So just as one American to another, I hope that we can start trying to find some common ground again and overcome all those forces trying to divide us and put us into little boxes apart from each other,” the former senator and first lady adds.
Whether Clinton changed their minds about the conspiracy theory was unclear, but she certainly didn’t win over Russell, who said at the end of the episode, “I just can’t stand her.”
The other episodes look at conspiracy theories involving microchips in vaccines, mail-in ballots, Democratic megadonor George Soros, the origins of the coronavirus and bricks said to be left at protest sites by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
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