Dana Carvey made his first-ever appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Wednesday, somehow, after nearly two decades the late-night show has been on-air. And during his visit, the Saturday Night Live alum had another first: debuting his impression of former President Donald Trump.
The 66-year-old comedian is well known for voicing celebrities and politicians, and right off the bat, he did crack impersonations of his fellow SNL colleagues, including David Spade, Jon Lovitz, and Lorne Michaels. That discussion led to Carvey’s penchant for presidential impersonations — as he’s perhaps best known for his George H. W. Bush during his tenure on the long-running sketch comedy show — as he recalled voicing John F. Kennedy as a child, and later Ronald Reagan, and so on.
Naturally, the conversation led to impressions of our 45th commander-in-chief. Conceding that current SNL star James Austin Johnson does a “brilliant” Trump, Carvey said that he got the inspiration to give it a shot himself after having Johnson on his Fly on the Wall podcast with Spade.
“And what I did was — and I was fascinated by — that Trump can really talk,” Carvey explained, digging some papers out of his suit. “And he doesn’t say anything, it’s just that he has these weird phrases.”
“So it’s Trump with no real sentence structure, he continued, doing a few random phrases of his own. “Frankly, let me tell you, you’re gonna be seeing a lot of it, that I can tell you … I mean when you look at it, and you look it didn’t work out so great for so many of these people, and you’re seeing it all over the place, many people are saying, we don’t want — we’re not those people, we don’t do that OK.”
He went on for a bit longer, but you probably get the gist. Not bad, we have to admit. He’s no Anthony Atamanuik, in our opinion, but we guess it’s nice to have some options out there to prepare for the potential second coming of Trump?