Jamie Foxx is a man of endless talents, as anyone who has seen Collateral and heard the hook on “Blame It” is well aware. But between the Grammy and Oscar and BAFTA awards, it’s easy to overlook the skill for impressions he polished decades ago on In Living Color — especially when he’s more or less been hiding one of his better caricatures for the past seven years. In an episode of the Rap Radar podcast, Foxx showed off one of the better Trump impressions of our time:
Foxx’s impression nails some key Trumpisms: his ambient hoarseness, his squinting, his confident interruptions, his refusal to be pinned down on details he clearly doesn’t know.
From the grace with which Foxx switches into Trump mode, it seems clear this isn’t the first time he’s done the impression. Indeed, a quick search reveals Foxx has actually been doing the voice on occasion since the 2015 GOP presidential primary. But given the number of times Foxx hit the late-night circuit in the Trump years — and the fact that the other actor with this caliber of impression, James Austin Johnson, rose from doing bit parts on cable to the cast of SNL on the merit of his presidential lampoon — one might expect Foxx’s Trump to be a little more well known. By our judgement, Johnson’s more dynamic version is still the best (he’s got the weird glottal sounds on command), but we’re excited to see Foxx provide some competition.
