James Austin Johnson frequently embodies Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live, which recently aired its season finale. But Johnson couldn’t resist the opportunity to imitate Trump again last night following a New York jury finding the former president guilty on 34 charges. The SNL cast member shared an Instagram video in which he mimics Trump’s reaction, parodying it as a bizarre rant about Bucca di Beppo and the high cost of carbonara.
“When you go to a Bucca di Beppo, there’s so many wonderful things that are on walls and that there are on the table, frankly, if you look at the pope room, there’s a big head of the pope, and you should be able to play with it, I think, like an action figure or something,” Johnson says as Trump while walking through a parking garage. “You know when you go to a collectible store and they have so much behind glass, you can’t look at any of it? The last time I checked, Buca di Beppo was not a collectible store, so we would like to be able to take the framed photographs down from the men’s room at Buca di Beppo.”
He eventually gets to the trial, sort of. “And instead what you have is a very disgraceful judge who has said that you’re not allowed to do that when in fact you should be allowed to do that because they’re fun pictures,” he says. “And the carbonara’s very expensive. And I think carbonara — what is that, like four, five ingredients? Peas, it’s bacon, you know, they give it a different name, Italian name, but it’s bacon. And I think some cheese, maybe a couple eggs. And it sounds like breakfast but it’s a very yummy pasta. But they charge you so much.”
Johnson has played Trump on SNL since 2021, when he debuted his impression in an episode hosted by Kieran Culkin. Last April, the late-night sketch show aired a sketch about Trump’s arrest ahead of the recent trial. In the skit, Johnson’s Trump compares himself to Jesus. “A famous, wonderful man arrested for no reason at all,” he says. “If you haven’t put it together, folks, I’m comparing myself to Jesus again, and what better time than on his birthday, Easter. As we speak, I am being persecuted on a level the likes of which the world has never seen — even worse than the late, great Jesus.”
Yesterday, a jury in New York found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records stemming from a payment to keep adult film actress Stormy Daniels quiet about an alleged affair out of fear that it would hurt his chances of winning the 2016 election. The jury began deliberating on Tuesday before returning the verdict Thursday afternoon. They were unanimous in their decision, which took them about 7.5 hours to reach. Judge Juan Merchan set Trump’s sentencing for July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention.
