A Trump Impersonator Worthy of Being Called “A Disgrace to the World”
A clip from Comedy Central’s “The President Show” that features a child scolding an ersatz Donald Trump went viral over the weekend, thanks to Anthony Atamanuik’s spot-on performance.
PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAD BARKET / GETTY FOR COMEDY CENTRAL
This weekend, in what turned out to be a real instance of fake news, hundreds of thousands of people on social media shared a clip of a little girl telling a man who looked a lot like Donald Trump that he was “a disgrace to the world.” The girl’s sentiments might have been genuine, but her interlocutor was not: she was speaking to the comedian Anthony Atamanuik, in what was one of his recurring Trump-on-the-street segments for his new late-night show, “The President Show,” on Comedy Central.
Atamanuik tweeted this weekend that the scene, which aired on last Thursday’s show, had not been staged, and that the little girl was not necessarily aware that she wasn’t speaking to the real President. Certainly, the resemblance between the two men is considerable, despite the fact that Atamanuik is younger than Trump, with slightly less heft and a markedly different nose. In addition to wearing the expected trappings—wig, self-tanning lotion—Atamanuik has mastered what might be the most important element of a good Trump impression: the imperious forward lean. He recently demonstrated the particular Trump posture to Stephen Colbert, noting, of the President, that “he has no center of gravity,” hence his reported fear of stairs and slopes.
Atamanuik began doing his Trump in 2015, in performances with the improv group Upright Citizens Brigade, and later squared off in mock debates with the comedian James Adomian, who played Bernie Sanders, in a series of live performances and on Comedy Central’s late-night show “@midnight.” As Alec Baldwin’s Trump impression on “Saturday Night Live” gained widespread admiration, Atamanuik’s Trump became the preferred choice among comedy connoisseurs. This, in part, owed to some behind-the-scenes controversy: Atamanuik auditioned for “S.N.L.” in April, 2016, doing his impression of Trump—and, incidentally, of Baldwin—but was not cast. Later, when Baldwin débuted his version, in October, some viewers pointed out that his repeated pronunciation of China, as “Gyna,” was similar to a running gag that Atamanuik had used in his impression. Baldwin, meanwhile, has described his Trump as a nearly spontaneous creation. (In March, the two appeared to feud on Twitter, after Baldwin dismissed Atamanuik as being a “guy on the Internet.”)
Despite Atamanuik’s insider credibility, I was slow to appreciate his impression. He captures Trump’s physical mannerisms, including his odd repertoire of hand gestures, and, in speaking, nails his breathy lower registers, as well as the phrases that he tacks on to the ends of sentences. But he also injects into Trump’s speech an exaggerated shrillness, a pinched whine, that, when paired with the low notes, makes each sentence a broadly comedic seesaw. Trump doesn’t really talk this way, and Atamanuik’s distinctive spin seemed a step too far from the original—a distracting rather than enriching element that showed too much of the performer at the expense of the subject.
Then, on March 23rd, the real Donald Trump welcomed representatives of the American Trucking Associations to the White House and, as part of a photo op for the visit, got behind the wheel of a semi that had been parked on the front drive. There in the cab, hunched over the wheel and yanking on a cord to blow the truck’s horn, Trump looked happier than he has any time before or since as President. As he praised big men and their big trucks, he seemed like a boastful and demanding little boy, whose proud delight in an object might turn suddenly to sad rage if it were taken away from him. Which is to say that he seemed a lot like Anthony Atamanuik’s Trump.
On “The President Show,” Atamanuik has further accentuated his interpretation of Trump as an over-sugared child inhabiting the body of a seventy-year-old man. During the first episode, in his opening monologue, he squealed, like a kid talking about his great summer vacation, about how he “talked to a lady astronaut on the computer.” Later, he exclaimed, “I’m the President! Can you believe it?” (In an odd turn, the real Trump, a week later, during a ceremony celebrating the passage of a health-care bill, said exactly the same thing.) In another segment, after seeing a dump truck on the streets of New York, he prattled on giddily, “Honk! Honk! goes the truck.” In the second episode, he explained why he preferred issuing executive orders: “I get to make people do whatever I want.” Later, he clutched a golden cup that he claimed, without evidence, had belonged to Andrew Jackson—his new, shiny toy. As in most cases of arrested development, this Trump is trapped in a sad purgatory, tormented by whatever long ago made him the incomplete man he is today. In the first episode, after babbling about the dump truck, he imagines driving it into the river. “When I let go, the water fills my lungs, and I’m finally at peace. And only then do I find the complete and absolute solitude that I’ve wanted.”
“The President Show” faces a common challenge for political comedy in the age of Trump: how to be funny and signal honest opposition at the same time. Each episode begins with a monologue by Trump from a mockup of the press briefing room. Then he moves on to a desk piece in the Oval Office, accompanied by his hapless straight-man sidekick Mike Pence (played by Peter Grosz). Later, he does an interview from Mar-a-Lago with a guest. The conceit of these interviews—so far, with Keith Olbermann and Dan Savage—has been that, after clownishly sparring with an opposition figure, Atamanuik, as Trump, will suddenly offer trenchant and wise analysis on a major issue that is meant to be jarring but mostly feels like an applause line for the liberal audience—a wink to let everyone know that the show’s creators are on the right side. The same is true of the show’s final remarks, in which Atamanuik again skewers some policy of the Administration, producing another reliable round of cheering and applause.
Yet the show’s best segments are the pretaped bits, like the one that went viral, in which Atamanuik gets out and blunders among the people, many of whom, either because he looks like Trump or because there are TV cameras following, are seen gawking and taking cell-phone photos. Loosed on the world, Atamanuik’s impression is deliriously funny. And back in the studio, when he riles up the crowd with some Trumpian indecency, and sneers and preens foolishly amid their angry response, his exhilarating impression communicates opposition and contempt all on its own.
'A Trump Impersonator Worthy of Being Called “A Disgrace to the World” – Re-Shared and administered by Aaron Halim
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