That Borat Video of Giuliani Looks a Little Fishy

A closer look at the now-infamous scene involving Rudy Giuliani in the new Borat film suggests it was edited to appear worse than it was, writes Allahpundit at Hot Air. And he's not alone. You can watch the scene here. It shows Giuliani on a bed in the presence of a young woman he thought was a reporter. She removes his microphone, and Giuliani puts his hands down his pants. He insists he was merely re-tucking his shirt after the mic was removed. "Pay attention to the cuts," writes Allahpundit. "When his hands first disappear, we're watching him from behind the actress. Then suddenly we're watching him in the mirror, fiddling. Then we're watching him still fiddling from behind the actress again." His theory? It's "the same two or three seconds of footage shown from two different angles to make it appear that he was doing it for longer than he really was."

A frame-by-frame analysis by Matthew Dessem at Slate suggests this is plausible. "There are enough places where the audio and editing could have been manipulated to make the encounter seem creepier than it actually was," he writes. The only way we'll know for sure is if Sacha Baron Cohen releases the unedited footage. Still, both Dessem and Allahpundit aren't giving the unmarried 76-year-old a fully clean pass. Dessem calls him "handsy" in the hotel room. Allahpundit says the scene is "depressing" in two ways. "An old man is being humiliated sexually as a form of entertainment," he writes. "And the president’s lawyer is walking right into a glaringly obvious honey trap set by some eastern European woman whom he's just met." So could Giuliani sue? Sure, but he'd have little chance of success, per USA Today. (Cohen is getting mileage out of the controversy.)