Comedian's Spot-On Trump Impressions Go Viral
Sarah Cooper gives the world endless hours of hilarity
We’ve all seen Alec Baldwin’s now infamous portrayal of President Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live and thought to ourselves, “No one could ever top this.” Then, comedian Sarah Cooper came along, giving Baldwin a serious run for his money.
Cooper has found Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, well, as ridiculous as the rest of us, and decided to commemorate some of his more prolific (and by prolific, I mean not prolific at all) moments with lip-synced TikToks. She also acts out characters’ presumed reactions during his press conferences (looking at you, Dr. Birx) and elsewhere, which may be even funnier than the lip-syncing itself.
Each video is funnier than the next, featuring Cooper lip-syncing Trump’s most memorable (read: horrific) parts of his speeches related to the coronavirus pandemic. She is flawless; and since releasing the videos on TikTok and Twitter, has been retweeted by comedy giants, including Ben Stiller, Sarah Silverman, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Billy Eichner.
Cooper has done everything from Trump’s most recent claim that he’s taking hydroxychloroquine and incorrectly explaining what “per capita” means to talking about testing and how testing means more cases, but if we didn’t test, we wouldn’t have cases — omg someone kill me now.
Cooper is a writer and comedian, and is self-described as “#blockedbytrump.” She’s also written two books, 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings and How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings.
Though she’s done stand-up for years, she recently told The Atlantic she felt guilty at first she hadn’t actually written this material. Though, to be fair, Trump gives everyone enough material to work with.
“My impostor syndrome is kicking in,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Wait, I didn’t actually write anything.’ I didn’t actually work very hard on this at all, so what does that say about me, that I went viral with something I basically spent an hour on? I’ll just chalk it up to years and years of trying different things to get to this point.”
Cooper made her first video on TikTok, and once she shared it on Twitter, it rightly took off, prompting her to bless us all with more videos, which she shares across multiple platforms.
The reason it resonates (besides the obvious) is that, as Cooper explains, taking away the podium, press members, and presidential seal, Trump’s words sounds as ridiculous as they are, especially coming from her. “You take all of that away, and you have those words coming out of my mouth? It just brings to light even more how ridiculous it is,” she said.
Please do yourself a favor and follow her on Twitter.
