Sacha Baron Cohen has been sharing some deleted scenes and behind-the-scenes footage from Borat 2, and in his latest tweet, he shows that he’s the rare comedian actually putting his personal safety on the line to clown on bigots. One scene in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm has Cohen’s Borat in disguise, and then going up to sing a country music song about how COVID is fake and the media is bad and basically playing to the hatred of a right-wing crowd that would gobble up that nonsense. It’s like the new version of “Throw the Jew Down the Well” where Cohen knows he only needs to nudge his audience to sing along with some really awful things.

However, as this new deleted scene shows, not everyone was pleased with Cohen’s mockery. It’s kind of a fascinating thing to share because it shows not everyone falls for Cohen’s schtick these days, and that there’s a real risk to not pulling off the gag because you’ve got people who are already angry and violent, and then you poke them. I’m sure detractors will claim that this is more of Cohen’s clever editing, but let’s be clear: before Cohen even showed up, you had a bunch of people who were furious at the thought of any kind of personal sacrifice in the midst of a pandemic.

While it’s good to get a laugh out of this stuff, this clip is a reminder that we’re living in dangerous times where people were planning to kidnap and murder the Governor of Michigan all because she got on the President’s bad side. I don’t know if this is going to be cleared up after the election, and honestly, things are probably going to get worse before they get better. At least folks like Cohen are out there trying to get a laugh out this nightmare world.

Check out the clip below.