The Brilliant Political Impressionist Ready to Take on Trump 2.0

There are few comedians more ready to take on the insane cast of characters that will surround Donald Trump in his second term than James Adomian. The 44-year-old comedian has made a name for himself over the past two decades for his spot-on impressions of political characters like Elon Musk, Jesse Ventura, and the MyPillow guy Mike Lindell.

In this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, Adomian talks about channeling some of his many voices into his first-ever hour-long stand-up special Path of Most Resistance on YouTube (after all the major streamers turned him down). He also talks about why he never ended up on Saturday Night Live, getting two big breaks from late-night hosts Craig Ferguson and Jimmy Kimmel, and what it was like to finally do his Bernie Sanders impression to Bernie Sanders’ face.

Adomian dropped his new special on YouTube late last year after what he describes as “years and years and years” of being told by the major streaming platforms that he wasn’t “famous enough.” This is despite amassing a loyal following for his remarkable voice work on podcasts like Comedy Bang! Bang! and Chapo Trap House.

In Path of Most Resistance, Adomian seamlessly weaves between more traditional stand-up jokes and various characters both real (like conspiracist Alex Jones) and invented (a certain type of aging gay male writer who has gone anti-woke). The special is such an under-the-radar triumph that it’s no surprise one of the top YouTube comments declares that Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels never hiring Adomian is “the biggest fumble in comedy history.”

“Who knows? Maybe that was Lorne Michaels, drunk and feeling guilty,” Adomian jokes to me. “Maybe he has a secret YouTube comments page where he goes to confess his regrets.”

When Adomian and I previously spoke at the SXSW festival in 2018, he pointedly accused Michaels and SNL of rejecting him after he auditioned in the early 2000s because he is an out gay man. “It would be nice if they put a gay man on camera on that show,” he said the year before current cast member Bowen Yang was hired, suggesting that Michaels was “afraid of America’s dads.”

These days, he’s somewhat more diplomatic when it comes to LGBTQ representation in comedy, acknowledging that “things have gotten better overall” while also adding, ominously, “We’re about to see what happens in the next four years” under the new Trump administration.

But if any comedian is prepared to take on the bizarre cast of characters who will surround Trump during his second term, it’s Adomian, who in addition to Musk and Lindell has a mean impression in his back pocket of Sebastian Gorka, who Trump has tapped as a senior director for counterterrorism.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Wilstein, it is you who will be put on the throne of fire,” Adomian says, instantly channeling Gorka’s unmistakable British-Hungarian-American dialect.

Adomian was also impersonating “quasi-shadow president” Musk long before he became the second most powerful man in America—if not the first. “It’s like some kind of dystopian science fiction story from 30 or 40 years ago,” Adomian remarks. “And yet here we are in the dystopian future with a billionaire shadow president who’s pushing artificial intelligence and a fascist takeover of the country. How delicious!”

Unlike Dana Carvey’s impression of Musk on SNL, which Musk himself publicly trashed on X, Adomian’s has so far gone unremarked upon by the world’s richest man. But given how “obsessed” he is with comedy and how much attention he pays to his own mentions, Adomian says he is certainly aware of it.

“Elon Musk definitely knows about my impression of him,” Adomian confirms. “And he definitely does not like it.”

Listen to the episode now and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Wednesday.