James Austin Johnson Recalls the First Time He Was in the Same Room As President Trump

Simply being in the same room as President Trump left a “yuge” impression on Saturday Night Live star James Austin Johnson. 

In a new interview with Today, Johnson said that despite parodying Trump on SNL since 2021, he’d never actually shared a space with the Commander-in-Chief until this summer at the U.S. Open. 

“I don’t get a whole lot of one-on-one time with the people that I form impressions of,” Johnson explained after joking about his lack of run-ins with his other SNL character, Bob Dylan. “You gotta be in Malibu at a very specific time of day to see Bob Dylan out of the house.” 

Though Trump has never personally responded to Johnson’s SNL impression, a closer-range interaction between the pair would likely come with a risk of disaster. The president has long expressed his disdain for SNL’s portrayal of him over the years, even slamming Alec Baldwin’s “terrible impersonation” of him back in 2018.

More recently, a Twitter account associated with Trump’s re-election campaign targeted Johnson last fall, denouncing a sketch featuring jokes about Trump’s July 2024 assassination attempt as “disgusting.” “There were two assassination attempts against President Trump within a span of seven weeks,” the account posted. “@nbcsnl apparently finds that funny.”

Considering Trump’s ongoing beef with late-night comedy, it’s likely only a matter of time before Johnson feels the wrath of one of 47’s Truth Social posts.