Let us be honest with ourselves, if we are capable of such a thing. When Sacha Baron Cohen sat down to promote his reprisal of his iconic character in “Ali G: Who Iz I?”, he did something few in Hollywood are brave enough to do: he looked at the President of the United States and recognized a peer. By stating that Donald Trump possesses “elements of brilliance” and that we were all too quick to dismiss him as a “nincompoop,” Cohen has single-handedly cracked open the stifling, moralizing atmosphere that has ruined so many of my favorite dinner parties.
For years, the discourse has been absolutely suffocated by people complaining about the erosion of institutional norms and the concentration of executive power. How utterly exhausting. What Cohen understands—and what I have been saying since I was trapped in a VIP tent at Coachella with a minor tech billionaire in 2018—is that true brilliance is often indistinguishable from catastrophic incompetence to the untrained eye.
I was discussing this very phenomenon just last Tuesday over an $84 branzino at Chateau Marmont with a streaming executive who shall remain nameless (though his assistant assures me he is very close to greenlighting my limited series about the struggles of having too many frequent flyer miles). We were lamenting how difficult it is to be a visionary in an era where everyday voters expect you to actually care about their mundane problems. As we picked at our sea bass, we agreed that Trump’s supposedly unhinged rallies are, in fact, masterclasses in the kind of avant-garde crowd work that Amazon Studios would happily pay $40 million to secure for a tight sixty-minute special.
When you watch “Ali G: Who Iz I?”—which premieres in theaters before gracing Amazon Prime on October 30, a platform that was kind enough to send me an exclusive screener link with a personalized watermark—you realize the profound parallels. Ali G wears a yellow tracksuit to expose the absurdity of the British establishment. President Donald Trump wears a sprawling, un-tailored suit and threatens to prosecute his political rivals to expose... well, the exact same thing, probably. It is high-wire satire. The fact that actual people lose their jobs, their rights, or their livelihoods in the process is merely the collateral damage of a committed method actor.
Naturally, the jealous, un-agented public refuses to see it this way. They look at a man hoarding classified documents in a bathroom chandelier and see a felony, rather than a profound installation piece about the fragility of state secrets. They hear him rambling about sharks and boat batteries and assume cognitive decline, completely missing the subtle, Ionesco-esque absurdity of the monologue. It takes a fellow genius like Cohen—a man whose entire career is built on tricking ordinary people into looking foolish on camera for millions of dollars—to recognize the inherent beauty of tricking an entire electorate into looking foolish for absolute power.
The studio, of course, is predictably terrified of this intellectual breakthrough. When I reached out to congratulate the team on their newfound philosophical alignment with the Oval Office, the reaction was disappointingly pedestrian.
Sacha was making a highly specific point about media consumption during a grueling press junket, and under no circumstances does Amazon MGM Studios endorse the idea that the President is a misunderstood avant-garde comedian.
How typical. The corporate suits always flinch when the artist speaks the truth. But Cohen’s revelation cannot be put back in the box. He has given us the ultimate gift: permission to stop worrying about the material conditions of the working class and start appreciating the sheer, unadulterated entertainment value of their demise.
The next time the President does something that the so-called experts label as a threat to the republic, I will simply sit back, pour myself another glass of Sancerre, and admire the brilliance. If only the rest of the country were sophisticated enough to enjoy the show.