Sacha Baron Cohen has dropped a huge hint that seems to suggest that he's about to make a movie about US President Donald Trump.
He posted a video to his Twitter account featuring the American flag and highlights from one of the President's old videos from 2012, in which he laid into the actor behind comedy characters Ali G and Borat. The post was captioned: 'A message from your President @realDonaldTrump on Independence Day'. Take a look...
In the video, Trump calls Cohen 'a third-rate character', going on to say: "I only wish he had been punched in the face so many times right now he would be in the hospital."
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That's followed by: "It was disgraceful. He oughta be fired immediately."
The comedian's clip then cuts to The Donald saying: "Sacha Baron Cohen, go to school, learn about being funny," with an on-screen message that reads 'Sacha Graduates Soon' and the logo of Trump University, the President's failed for-profit educational institution.
It's currently the only tweet on Cohen's profile - he's been Twitter since November 2015, has the prestigious blue tick and has accrued some 7,300 or so followers.
As ever with small Twitter pronouncements related to Donald Trump, there is an awful lot to unpack here.
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The caustic snippets in the video refer back to an incident in 2012, when Cohen crashed the Oscars as part of the promotion for his movie The Dictator, and dumped 'ashes' onto E!'s Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet. An unimpressed Trump responded by posting the video laying into the British actor.
Of course, Cohen and Trump had met before - way back in 2003 when Cohen was first making his name via his character Ali G, a parody of youth TV presenters, who routinely asked inappropriate or daft questions to provoke awkward responses from unwitting subjects.
When Ali met Trump, he tried to get him to invest in 'ice cream gloves', but after a short period, the real estate mogul turned President got wise to the ruse and ended the interview.
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Cohen tweeted the video for the Fourth of July and led many to believe that he might well be planning a movie about Trump University.
Trump University ran from 2005 until 2010 and was an 'education company' - not a university per se - that offered 'qualifications' though it was never accredited as a University or College of any kind.
It specialised in real estate, asset management and other entrepreneurial courses, charging students anywhere between $1495 and $35,000 for courses.
"If I had a choice of making lots of money or imparting lots of knowledge, I think I'd be as happy to impart knowledge as to make money," said Trump at the time of the launch back in 2004, though it was a for-profit institution and made no attempt to be a university in anything other than name.
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The whole project ended in a fiasco for Trump as it was the subject of several class action lawsuits that were settled in favour of the complainants to the tune of $25 million.
If Sacha Baron Cohen does choose to go down the angle of satirising Donald Trump, he'll certainly not be lacking in material from the saga of Trump University.
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