One girl did not hold back her feelings when she told a man she believed to be President Donald Trump, “You’re a disgrace to the world.” The man, however, was Trump impersonator Anthony Atamanuik.
Atamanuik is hosting a late-night show in character as Trump on The President Show, which airs weekly on Comedy Central. In a sketch for Thursday’s show, Trump greeted Tax Day protesters and got more than he bargained for when a girl, who thought it was the real president, blew him off when he asked if she wanted a picture. One Twitter user shared the moment from the sketch without Comedy Central’s branding, and many users assumed the moment was of real Trump footage.
The video post has garnered nearly 3,000 replies, with over 190,000 retweets and 286,000 likes, spurring Atamanuik to identify himself as the Trump in question and clarify that the girl in the video was not an actor.
who is she pic.twitter.com/amElWRGFdp
— najahta (@najahtaa) May 7, 2017
The president greets the Tax Day protesters, and the crowd LOVES him. Huge! https://t.co/KJ41qK2OEJpic.twitter.com/lkjtg6Ne4M
— The President Show (@PresidentShow) May 7, 2017
Atamanuik first took his version of The Donald on a “Trump vs. Bernie” nationwide tour before landing the Trump gig on The President Show. The series follows late-night format, with Trump hosting from the Oval Office alongside sidekick Vice President Mike Pence, played by Peter Grosz. He also takes his Trump out into the field, as shown in the above sketch, and welcomes celebrity guests to the New York City set.
Keith Olbermann, who was The President Show‘s first guest, also got involved in the weekend chatter to tell Twitter users, “That’s not Trump it’s @TonyAtamanuik on his Comedy Central @presidentshow. Tony’s really good.”
“I like to say I do an impression of his psyche and an impression of his soul,” comedian Atamanuik told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the show’s premiere. “It’s easy to do the surface impression, that’s just training and body conditioning. But in watching him, I learned all these psychological refrains that were fascinating.”
The half-hour late-night show airs at 11:30 p.m., following Trevor Noah’s The Daily Show.
