James Austin Johnson

About

James Austin Johnson is a Los Angeles-based comedian and actor who grew popular online in 2020 with several videos in which he did a widely-praised impersonation of Donald Trump.

History

James Austin Johnson is a Los Angeles-based comedian from Nashville, Tennessee.^[1] He has worked as an actor, appearing as a recurring character in Future Man while getting small roles in shows like Better Call Saul and movies including Hail Caesar!.^[2] He launched his YouTube account on August 18th, 2011.

Johnson debuted his Trump impersonation in a Star Wars parody posted to Twitter on December 6th, 2019, gaining over 670 retweets and 1,900 likes (shown below).

Over the following year, he posted many more parodies before gaining widespread attention with a video where his impression of Trump talks about Scooby-Doo. The video, posted August 21st, 2020, gained over 1.6 million views on the platform (shown below, top). On October 18th, he posted his most popular impression video to date, having his Trump talk about Weird Al Yankovic, gaining over 2.9 million views on the platform (shown below, bottom). The video was described as his "breakout performance,"^[4] and after the video came out, he was covered by multiple news outlets.

Online Presence

After the Scooby-Doo video began to spread, Johnson began receiving media attention and praise for his impression. He was interviewed by Discourse Blog,^[3] where he said of his impression:

That’s the main thing I focus on, is that this is a rasping old man who is inches from death at any moment. He’s dying. He’s inches from death and Billy Crystal has come out with the bellows from the Princess Bride and they pumped him full of steroids and give him a big shot in his ass, and he’s hanging on for dear life every moment of the day.

He was praised in a write-up in Slate,^[4] who compared his impression favorably to other notable attempts at Trump impressions, like Alec Baldwin's. "The key to Johnson’s Trump is his operatic aria of logorrheic randomness," they wrote. Johnson has also been written about in Mashable^[5] and interviewed by Vice.^[6]

Johnson has over 57,000 followers on Twitter^[7] and 22,000 followers on Instagram.^[8]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References