July 23, 2018

Republican Lawmaker Filmed With Pants Down, Screaming N-Word to Resign

Jason Spencer had claimed that the show’s “fraudulent behavior is exactly why Donald Trump was elected.”

Update, 7/25: Georgia House Speaker David Ralston announced late Tuesday that Jason Spencer will resign as state representative amid mounting anger over his conduct on “Who Is America?” Spencer had initially refused to step down.

It was only the second episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Who Is America,” but Jason Spencer, a state representative from Georgia, may have already succeeded in delivering the most mortifying appearance in the controversial new show.

That dubious achievement came on Sunday, when Spencer was featured participating in what he believed to be a training video for Israeli anti-terrorism expert Erran Morad who, unbeknownst to Spencer, is a fictional character played by Cohen. Cohen debuted the character in the show’s premiere last week. In that episode, Morad convinces Republican lawmakers to embrace the idea of arming young children to combat school shootings.

The resulting segment featured Spencer delivering a series of incendiary and offensive moments, including one in which he dropped his pants and made homophobic remarks as a tactic to convince a potential terrorist to release his weapon. “Touch it! I’ll make you a homosexual,” Spencer says, chasing Morad with his naked buttocks exposed. “Drop that gun right now!”

In another clip, Spencer repeatedly screams the N-word as a way to demonstrate the best approach to escape from an attempted ISIS kidnapping.

The Republican lawmaker is also filmed conducting a racist impersonation of a Chinese person.

Spencer has since released a statement alleging Cohen “took advantage” of his fears. “They exploited my state of mind for profit and notoriety,” he complained. “This media company’s deceptive and fraudulent behavior is exactly why Donald Trump was elected.” 

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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