Bryan Cranston Debuts His Donald Trump Impression

Bryan Cranston debuted his Donald Trump impression on the Today show on Monday, and people are pretty impressed with it.

Bryan Cranston was on the show to talk about his new movie, The Infiltrator, where he plays Robert Mazur, a federal agent who goes undercover to infiltrate Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar’s crime network.

Today host Carson Daly pointed out that Bryan Cranston has been playing serious historical figures lately, including Lyndon Baines Johnson on Broadway and in the film All the Way, and he asked Cranston if there’s another historical figure he’d like to play sometime soon.

“I’d like to play Donald Trump at some point,” Cranston said, according to The Daily Beast.

“He’s huge. He’s this Shakespearean character, this serio-tragic-comedic character,” Cranston said. “Who wouldn’t want to take a bite out of that?”

Daly then asked Cranston if he’s been practicing his Donald Trump impression, and Cranston responded by going into his Trump impression.

“This I can tell you, it is yuge,” Cranston joked. Cranston also took a shot at Donald Trump’s body language.

Bryan Cranston isn’t the first actor to take a shot at a Donald Trump impression. Jimmy Fallon has famously been working on his Trump impression on The Tonight Show, and he even got to impersonate Donald Trump with Trump as his guest.

Dana Carvey, of Saturday Night Live fame, did a very convincing impression of Donald Trump when he appeared on Conan in June. Carvey first gained wide popularity for his political impressions when he did his impression of George H.W. Bush.

Bryan Cranston’s new film, The Infiltrator, starts with a cocaine bust orchestrated by a criminal named Bob Mangione. That’s the persona that Cranston’s character takes on as his undercover identity for the operation, according to Time.

Cranston’s character later takes on the identity of a businessman named Bob Musella. The federal agent, Mazur, is an American man who cares deeply for his family at home.

“I just liked the idea that there was a man who was committed to trying to improve his country, his society, and in order to do that, he had to become very good friends with some very bad people,” Cranston said of his character.

Bryan Cranston is already well-known for his role as the teacher-gone-meth cooker Walter White in the hit show Breaking Bad, and his recent role as Lyndon Baines Johnson received much praise.

In All the Way, Bryan Cranston plays LBJ dealing with the aftermath of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. LBJ was Kennedy’s vice president and had to assume his role as president after the assassination. It follows LBJ attempting to get the Civil Rights Act passed, which had been a major goal of the Kennedy administration.

It’s no accident that Cranston tends to take on roles that have political influences. Cranston is known for being quite political in his personal life, and he has appeared on shows like Real Time with Bill Maher to discuss politics in the past.

Notably, Cranston received quite a bit of attention when he spoke out against the National Rifle Association in 2013.

“The [National Rifle Association] is being disingenuous,” Cranston told Politico at the time. “They feel that any legislation — even sensible legislation — that could curb their absolute feeling that they have total open control of the gun issue is ridiculous. They think it’s a slippery slope, … and they hide behind the Second Amendment. The truth is the forefathers built in the avenue of amendments for this specific reason, knowing that there would be changes in society as it goes along.”

[Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images]