Less than a week after Showtime aired a Who Is America? episode featuring Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff says that he responded to questions about oral sex and a “golden shower” because he was confused by comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s fake Finnish accent.
In an interview with The Washington Examiner published Friday, Arpaio said that he commented on questions about a “golden shower,” “handjob” and “blowjob” because he was confused about what Cohen — who assumed a Finnish YouTube personality persona for the segment — was saying.
“So he’s talking and I couldn’t understand him. He’s talking about golden showers. I thought he was talking about — the president has gold [in his shower],” Arpaio said. Arpaio said on the episode that it “wouldn’t surprise him” if Donald Trump had had a “golden shower,” a phrase used to describe reports that Trump once ordered prostitutes to perform the sexual act, involving urination, in a hotel room in Russia.
Arpaio also responded to a question about his first “handjob” on the episode, saying, “Let me say this, me. Whatever I did in my life, I always did that extra. It gets me in trouble sometime.”
Of those comments, Arpaio told the Examiner, “And then handjob. What was that? He was talking about illegals coming over working with their hands on their job.”
Arpaio also told Cohen that he “may have to say yes” to an offer of a blowjob from the president.
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“Then the other thing — the only thing I got was that he would offer me a job. I didn’t hear that little thing before that,” the sheriff said of the “blowjob” comment. “I don’t know where that came from.”
In the same interview, Arpaio issued a challenge to the Showtime star: “Get the guts, get out of your undercover role, come and interview me in English, of course, so I can understand him so we can go man-to-man,” he said. “You can ask me anything you want. I’ll be glad to deal with it.” (The interview was, indeed, conducted in English, though the British comedian assumed an accent for the segment.)
Arpaio has been fighting back against Cohen since the prank show premiered. In an interview with The Arizona Republic in mid-July, the sheriff said that he first realized he had been punked by Cohen when Sarah Palin spoke out against the production. During production, Arpaio said, he began to get suspicious when the conversation began to “zero in on sex.”
“I started to get a little angry, a little sad, but I went through it,” he said.
