Sacha Baron Cohen now says Donald Trump has “elements of brilliance” and that the left was wrong to draft him off, just as his new Ali G film opens after years of anti-Trump attacks.
The British comic sat down with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast and offered rare praise for the president he once tried to help defeat. Cohen said the left moved too fast to draft Trump off as a joke, and that underestimation helps explain how he returned for a second term.
Breitbart reported the remarks came on the eve of Cohen’s latest movie opening, with Ali G: Who Iz I? hitting theaters across the nation this weekend.
Cohen did not suddenly discover Trump. More than two decades ago, as the satirical character Ali G, he interviewed Trump when the future president was still a New York real estate mogul who had not yet run for office. That old sit-down is the story Cohen keeps retelling.
On the podcast, Cohen said the smartest and most powerful people he met as Ali G showed up on time. Trump did not.
As Ali G, I had the privilege of sitting with some of the smartest and most powerful people in the world, and all of them were punctual,
"As Ali G, I had the privilege of sitting with some of the smartest and most powerful people in the world, and all of them were punctual,"
Cohen told Horowitz. He added that Trump kept the crew waiting roughly 40 minutes, then walked in with an expletive-laden rant at staffers.
Cohen framed the late entrance as strategy, not sloppiness.
"It really was a power move,"
he said, describing the room as “intimidated.” The account fits a long pattern: opponents who treated Trump as a punch line later had to explain his staying power with voters.
That same staying power has defined recent Republican fights, including when Trump said Democrats already gave up a contested House seat rather than keep fighting.
Cohen went further on the politics. He tied Trump’s second term directly to people who sold him short.
"I mean, how has he survived a second term? People underestimated him,"
Cohen said. Then came the line that will sting his old allies on the left.
"We were too easy to dismiss him as a nincompoop. There are elements of brilliance to him, otherwise. And that explains his appeal with the fact that he’s there for a second term, the fact that he’s transforming this country. I won’t say positively or negatively."
He would not grade the transformation. He would not walk back the core admission either. Brilliance, appeal, second term, those words came from a man who once celebrated Trump’s exile from major platforms.
The new tone collides with Cohen’s own record. In 2016 he joked that Trump planned to pick Bill Cosby, then a convicted sex offender serving a long prison term, as a running mate. In 2021 he cheered when Facebook and pre-Elon Musk Twitter banned Trump and branded him a “purveyor of hate.”
That same year Cohen said he timed the second Borat film just ahead of the 2022 elections in hopes he could help lead to the destruction of Trump and the MAGA movement. The sequel did not deliver the political ending he wanted. Trump recovered from the 2020 setback and won again.
Voters who rejected that pressure have watched similar fights play out elsewhere, from Obama blasting Trump at a midterm rally to ongoing clashes over who sets the national agenda.
Cohen’s 2021 release strategy was open political warfare dressed as comedy. His 2026 podcast comments sound like damage control. Warner Todd Huston’s Breitbart account notes the kind words appear calculated to ease anger among Republicans, conservatives, and Trump supporters, and to lure them into buying tickets for a film already facing trouble.
Ali G: Who Iz I? did not arrive clean. In September, screenings were canceled after critics called the Ali G character racist and claimed it spreads stereotypes about Black people. Cohen came under fire. The movie is widely expected to bomb at the box office.
A comic who spent years framing Trump as a threat now needs paying audiences, including the same voters he once hoped to bury. Softening the insults on a podcast the night before opening weekend is not subtle. It is a sales pitch.
Trump’s own posture toward unlikely partners has shifted in public view as well, including when Trump praised New York’s socialist mayor even after warning Republicans about hard-left Democrats. Politics rewards results more than old grudges.
Cohen still refuses to say whether Trump is “transforming this country” for good or ill. He does say the nincompoop line was a mistake. That is more honesty than many of his peers have managed after years of failed predictions.
The same second-term reality Cohen now acknowledges sits at the center of larger fights over power and precedent, including when Trump claimed a right to seek another term after arguing 2020 was stolen. Underestimation has a price.
Hollywood spent a decade treating Trump as a punch line and a ban target. One of its loudest attackers now concedes “elements of brilliance” and a country already changed. Ticket buyers can decide whether the conversion is real, or just another late entrance timed for effect.