Who is America? episode 5 review: Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on the right to start genocide: 'Look, I don't know about that'

(Showtime)

Though Donald Trump’s approval ratings have dwindled, there is absolutely no stopping his popularity with his base, of which Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who is America? character Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr., PhD is clearly supposed to typify.

Why then, knowing that people like Ruddick are with Trump and his cause no matter what, are allies of the president so afraid of contradicting these devout followers?

“[One] can’t be attacking honest fascist people who just want to express their right to start a genocide?” Ruddick earnestly asked early Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in episode 5 (his successor, Paul Manafort, clearly wasn’t available, currently being on trial for tax evasion, bank fraud and money laundering amongst other crimes).

“Look, I don’t know about that,” Lewandowski replied, as if undecided on the matter of whether it's people's constitutional right to call for the death of millions.

Lewandowski, he of “womp womp” fame, was the centrepiece of the show tonight, though apart from the exchange above wasn’t provoked to say anything too silly, probably because of how clearly dumb and Infowars’d to the point of insanity Ruddick Jr. is.

Erran Morad, on the other hand, is a much more effective character, so imposing and impressive to macho Republicans that they’ll do just about anything he says. Tonight – I kid you not – that was taking a lesson in how to escape a beheading by essentially giving head.

“Everybody stay where you are,” Youth Shooters of America founder Daniel Roberts struggled to enunciate with Morad’s strap-on dildo in his mouth, only too keen to take the Israeli anti-terrorism expert’s instruction (and everything else).

Elsewhere in the episode, fashion mogul Gio Monaldo had former Rap Genius founder Mahbod Moghadam green-screening himself into a scene depicting him handing out sushi to impoverished children, while enjoyable new ‘Finnish YouTuber’ character OMGWhizzBoyOMG! mused over the political persuasions of inanimate toys with Sheriff David Clarke Jr. To be clear: “Maple donuts do not join Antifa.”

Ex-convict Rick Sherman – a character I’m not entirely sure the point of – got his longest segment to date, though it did give rise to a hilarious, Nathan Barley-esque nightclub scene where, DJIng, he shouted out to the cheering crowd: “Let’s hear it for all those murderers who is locked up because of crimes they committed! If you believe we should stop shaming murderers, say ‘yeah!’”

Who is America? is perhaps becoming a little formulaic, it being kind of a fish-in-a-barrel deal with these garden variety small-town Trump voters, but it’s hard to be critical when the show is so funny and frankly obliterating said fish, a welcome dose of absurdity and silliness amid all the very serious soul-searching going on in America right now.

Who is America? airs Sunday nights on Showtime in the US and follows Monday nights on Channel 4 in the UK.