Jason Spencer also dropped his pants in Who Is America? series after being told it would scare off Muslim terrorists

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A Georgia lawmaker has apologised for using racial slurs and dropping his pants in an episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s series Who Is America? shown on Sunday night. But he turned down a demand for his resignation from the state House speaker.

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The Republican state representative Jason Spencer, of Woodbine, repeatedly used a racial slur for African Americans and later exposed his bottom after being told it would help scare off Muslim terrorists.



Spencer has faced calls for his resignation before. Last year, he warned a black former state legislator that she would not be “met with torches but something a lot more definitive” if she continued to call for the removal of Confederate statues.

He lost a primary in May but his term does not end until after the November elections.

On Monday the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Georgia House speaker David Ralston said Spencer “has disgraced himself and should resign immediately”.



Ralston added: “Georgia is better than this.”

The newspaper said Spencer threatened legal action to prevent Showtime from airing footage of him. In a statement on Monday, Spencer apologized for the “ridiculously ugly episode” but refused to step down from office.

In the episode, the British satirist Cohen plays an Israeli military expert who tells Spencer to take part in what he is told is a counterterrorism video. Spencer is told to yell racial epithets and shimmy his exposed bottom toward purported Muslim attackers while screaming “USA” and “America”, which Cohen claims will frighten the terrorists off.

Spencer said he thought the techniques would prevent “what I believed was an inevitable attack”.

In a tweet, Georgia’s governor Nathan Deal said: “There is no excuse for this type of behavior, ever, and I am saddened and disgusted by it.”

The Islamic Council on American-Islamic Relations also called for Spencer’s resignation.

“The ignorance and malice behind Islamophobia has led Mr Spencer to not only pursue bad policy, but engage in humiliating and hateful behavior unbecoming of anyone – especially a state legislator,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, director of the group’s Georgia chapter.