SNL "effectively re-platformed" Donald Trump with James Austin Johnson's new impression

The Atlantic

Johnson got to use his viral impression of the former president that helped him land a spot on Saturday Night Live's cast. But as Megan Gaber notes, SNL's use of Trump in the cold open for the first time in a year was troubling. "The latest episode of the show ventured a new answer to the old question: If Donald Trump isn’t president … Saturday Night Live is still going to talk about Donald Trump," says Garber, adding: "Johnson’s take on the president, which had gone viral on social media before it came to SNL, embraces the truism that Trump can’t be mocked because he’s already such a mockery of himself. The impression is clinical in its precision. It is uncanny. But its implications are grim. Trump has been deplatformed from Twitter and Facebook and the U.S. presidency; still, he has been shouting from the sidelines, trying to argue that an election that did not end with his victory is an election that did not count. Trump is an ongoing emergency. But here he is, back on SNL, treated as ongoing comedy...The sketch made for decent comedy. Johnson’s impression is deeply skillful, and it skewers Trump’s tendency to make himself, even in his alleged absence, inescapable. The whole thing sent up Trump’s greatest skill: his ability to hijack attention. But doing that sendup also required SNL to let Trump … hijack its attention. The sketch effectively re-platformed him. And it turned Johnson’s great impression of Trump into a paradox. Alec Baldwin’s version of Trump, inane and grotesque and saliva-forward, was—say what else you will about it—making an argument about Trump’s monstrosity. It was attempting to work as satire. Johnson’s version of Trump, in contrast, is maniacal and mechanical, and impressive because it is such a faithful replication of the original. But does such an impression add anything to the conversation about Trump? Or does it merely churn more Trump into the atmosphere? .... SNL, for too long, was so interested in Trump as a joke that it ignored him as a threat. (Saturday's) episode suggests that the show has looked back over the previous years—and learned precisely nothing."

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• James Austin Johnson's Trump simply eclipses all of Alec Baldwin’s years of labored, lurching hamminess: "Johnson is a technician, and it’ll be interesting to see if his meticulous craftsmanship will extend to regular sketch work out of the prosthetics," says Dennis Perkins. "But, man, is he outstanding at the craft, his Trump’s swallowed syllables and garrulous topic-jumping punctuated with specific vocal tics that all ping off of our collective memories of the man. (Baldwin basically just hit the misapplied soft 'G' in words like 'China,' while Johnson marks out an entire lexicon of elided consonants and sudden pitch changes.) It’s uncanny enough that the crowd wasn’t roaring in the easy laughter Baldwin’s Trump was greeted with, a comically potent unease I can only hope Lorne doesn’t see as a weakness."
• SNL finally has a truly great Trump impersonator: "There are few things the United States needs more than another bad Donald Trump impression," says Dan Spinelli. "The man is beyond parody to the point of making even decent satire fall flat. But lo and behold, SNL, after committing itself to Alec Baldwin in the Trump role, has found the man born to play our 45th president. Close your eyes and you’ll think new cast member James Austin Johnson is the real thing. He nails the preening self-regard, the incessant need for attention, and the way Trump wields “excuse me” almost as a verbal saber. It feels perverse to laugh at a grotesque, exaggeratory version of Trump, when the one we have is more than enough. Johnson’s skill is in reflecting Trump as he truly is—and, however unnecessary it may seem to have more Trump in our lives—that is almost a more fitting way to go about it. What’s the use of making the guy a literal cartoon when he does that so well himself?"
• Johnson’s impersonation works so well because he’s able to replicate the insanity and, even more importantly, the inanity of the ex-president’s stream of consciousness ramblings: "This was something that Baldwin and the writers never really tapped into during Trump’s four years in office, but thankfully, the show seems keen on letting Johnson do his thing, as well they should," says Zach Vasquez. "The studio audience – who, like the majority of home viewers probably aren’t familiar with Johnson’s prior work – were clearly blown away by him, alternately wheezing in laughter, gasping at the accuracy of it all and breaking out in applause not once, but twice."
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