Having gotten nowhere with Pence, Borat resolves instead to give Tutar to Giuliani. But father and daughter hit a rough patch as Tutar undergoes a feminist awakening (as well as a Fox News blond-bombshell makeover), and she sets off to interview Giuliani on her own. Borat, who’s had a change of heart, rushes to the interview in the hopes of saving his daughter from what he presumes will be a carnal sacrifice.
In the meantime, Tutar and Giuliani sit down in a hotel room for the interview, which a nervous Tutar repeatedly fumbles. Giuliani attempts to reassure the girl, who responds with obsequious flattery and flirtation. The two even share some alcohol.
Here’s where things get … well, let’s say selectively edited.
“Shall we have a drink in the bedroom?” Tutar appears to ask Giuliani in the scene, though the actress is turned away from the camera while the line is heard. In the bedroom, Giuliani appears to say, “You can give me your phone number and your address,” though he, too, has his back to the hidden camera when the line is heard.
While Giuliani sits on the bed, Tutar unbuttons his shirt and appears to remove a microphone pack, but the moment is contextualized and scored to appear more like a seduction. Giuliani then leans back on the bed and puts a hand down his pants.
Giuliani has since claimed that he was merely tucking his shirt back in, and a plausible case could be made from the footage that he’s doing just that. Still, the camera lingers on Giuliani’s hand as it travels south of his waistband — an event that’s prolonged using multiple angles — until a lingerie-clad Borat interrupts the encounter and offers to take his daughter’s place, saying, “She 15, she too old for you.” (The actress playing Tutar, the newcomer Maria Bakalova, is 24.) Confused, Giuliani leaves.
When the encounter went down in July, Giuliani told The New York Post that he called the police on Baron Cohen. In the film, Borat and Tutar escape and go for a giddy victory run through the streets of New York. They got what they wanted and, clearly, so did Baron Cohen.
