J-L Cauvin squints beneath his MAGA cap as he peers toward the camera. The comedian is in full Donald Trump mode as he spoofs the president’s obsession with size and record-setting statistics. “We’re going for a hat trick,” the impersonator says in character. “I’m going to get a third impeachment in my last week, and then nobody will ever touch me.”
The two-minute video posted Wednesday, shortly after the House impeached the president for the second time, showed off Cauvin’s spot-on impression that has garnered the comic an army of followers on Twitter and YouTube since last spring, when his first viral Trump video attracted millions of views.
Impeaching Donald Trump twice proves that he is the greatest President of all time... and he's not done yet! YT link below pic.twitter.com/RNgKEHV7J8
— J-L Cauvin (@JLCauvin) January 13, 2021
Now, though, the New York-based comic is among a small cadre of mimics who must consider whether they will mothball their acclaimed satiric takes on Trump once he leaves the White House.
Some impersonators, like Cauvin and James Austin Johnson, found social-media fame while the nation was in lockdown — much like Trump lip-syncher Sarah Cooper, who has springboarded to projects that spotlight her nonpolitical comedy.
Meanwhile, veteran star talents like Anthony Atamanuik (Comedy Central’s “The President Show”) and Jeff Bergman (Showtime’s “Our Cartoon President”) could well jettison their performances of the outgoing president, satisfied that they got to strike while their scripted irony was hot. Even Alec Baldwin’s recurring SNL role should peacefully transition to Alex Moffat’s turn as the show’s Joe Biden.
Trump is certain to remain on the American landscape, yet how much fodder will his post-presidency provide? Four of the best Trump impersonators around tell The Post why he was a prime source of material, and what the life span of their impressions might be after Biden is sworn in.
Having honed their Trump impression for years, some say the comedy only clicked once the impersonation came from a deeply personal place.
Johnson, a 31-year-old actor and standup who moved to L.A. a decade ago, first had to get past the anger — the kind of fury he found under the family roof.
The performer grew up in Tennessee and Oklahoma among conservative churchgoing kin who had supported President George W. Bush. When one relative claimed Trump was Christlike, the comedian said they had better table the politics when together. But the ire seeped from his standup act. “My leftist anger would come out when I was doing my impression, and audiences were mortified,” Johnson says. “They thought that the voice was accurate so they listened, but they weren’t laughing at all.”
Johnson likes to impersonate singers, though, so when he recognized that Trump’s delivery had a certain tunefulness, his flowing, “free jazz” impression began to click. “I know the music of preachers and salesmen,” he says, and Trump fans “love the song he sings” — a hymn that harks back to America at mid-century.
The comedian, who incorporates aspects of his Southern and Christian upbringing in his standup, also realized the material didn’t have to be literally political. His Trump could deliver a spontaneous, near-nonsensical soliloquy about a rock band’s lyrics or a kids’ show — last summer, a rambling riff about Scooby-Doo drew more than 2.3 million views. “We’re giving way too much attention to Mr. Scooby, and he’s not doing anything. Scooby-Doo, he doesn’t do,” says Johnson’s Trump of this “terrible deal,” adding that the cartoon pooch is “stopping the bad guys, who are really not so bad.”
“I started having success with my Trump,” the comic says, “once I made him charming.”
SCOOBY-DON !! pic.twitter.com/DESl7LDplH
— Dame Austin Johnson (@shrimpJAJ) August 21, 2020
Bergman, who also voices Biden for the Washington-mocking show “Our Cartoon President,” grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s as the son of a New York retail salesman, and “filed away what people from Queens sound like.”
He has voiced a wealth of iconic cartoon characters — Bugs Bunny to Fred Flintstone to George Jetson — yet when it came to Trump, he initially tried delivering the politician’s speech as realistic. The producers and writers of the Showtime series decided they needed a warm-and-fuzzier Trump to make the comedy go.
Their animated leader “has empathy and regret and genuine joy,” says Bergman, 60, who’s based in L.A. “People would say: ‘Why do I like your cartoon president better than the [actual] president?’ And I would say: ‘Because he’s not real!’ ”
Bergman also aimed to convey a sense of self-involvement. “The thing I always loved about [studying] Trump is that when he would make a speech, he was just in love with the sound of his voice,” says the actor, noting: “He thought he was telling you the most unreal thing you were ever going to hear.”
When Johnson considers who does the best Trump as a complete character, he points to one performer: Atamanuik, who began impersonating the politician onstage before creating and starring in “The President Show,” which blended in-studio sketches with remote, “real people” scenes. Atamanuik captures “the emotion of Trump in a way I’m not doing,” Johnson says. “He’s the sketch-comedy Daniel Day-Lewis” of channeling the commander in chief.
Atamanuik says his Trump impersonation took shape once he captured the president’s body language. From there, “I tried to make this character my own,” says the 46-year-old actor, who hosts a talk show on the streaming platform Twitch. Much of the joy of the performance, though, came from playing off other actors, such as Peter Grosz as a subservient Vice President Pence.
“The President Show” ran for 25 episodes, ending in 2017, and last year, Atamanuik again donned the orange wig and long, red tie for his “Trump vs. Bernie” comedy tour — with James Adomian as Democratic candidate Sanders — before the pandemic struck.
Atamanuik takes pride in the technical craftsmanship of his Trump, but views him as a limited character: “Ultimately, a Trump impression is like an Elvis or a Shatner. How many corridors can you go down?”
Cauvin and Johnson believe Trump will remain prominent on the American stage after his presidency, so they plan to keep their impressions of him in their repertoire, even if his cultural relevance ebbs. “A friend bought me an orange prison shirt,” Cauvin says, “so I may make an infrequent series where I say it’s Trump in 2023 from prison.”
Cauvin, a 41-year-old Georgetown Law graduate, practices both standup comedy and the law full time (“I’m a part-time sleeper”), and says he hopes to release several projects this year, from a standup special to a sketch-comedy hour. Meantime, he has continued to drop viral videos since the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt — even though “my Mom just asked me to tone down the Trump comedy because of all the nuts out there,” tweeted Cauvin, who tells The Post: “The reason I keep doing videos since this coup attempt is because I never had any illusions about who Trump is.”
Johnson released a video spoofing the president’s warm words for the Capitol rioters, depicting Trump as a parent who says his violent child can earn a Lego set and watch SpongeBob if he behaves, and then reassures: “You’re a special boy, you’re beautiful and Daddy loves you very much.” The video has received more than 2 million views.
The performer notes that he is also trying to set up a post-President Trump “escape plan” by doing some of his other impressions on his podcast, including Biden, Bob Dylan and Bobby Flay.
Bergman isn’t sure whether “Our Cartoon President” will return for a fourth season, but playing Trump has been “a very cathartic experience,” says the actor, who is ready to reprise his avuncular, grinning Biden because “he has a sense of humor about himself.”
Atamanuik is certainly set to move on. Barring a pressing reason, he will retire his Trump impression once the president leaves office. His main motivation all along was “to portray him with a lens of truth and expose him,” he says, even if the power of political satire is minimal.
“No one is going to want to see my Donald Trump” now, Atamanuik says. “Anyone who is seeking Trump comedy after Jan. 21, I just feel bad for them.”
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