Want to be a Trump impersonator? You’ll have some competition
Appearances at parades, golf tournaments and even kids parties. Mike Bedigan speaks to those who are living the life...of the president
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Lying on a beach in Florida, attending fancy parties and playing regular rounds of golf; Thomas Mundy is living the life. In fact, he’s living the life of one person in particular – President Donald Trump, who he is paid to impersonate.
Business is truly booming, he tells The Independent from the sands of Fort Lauderdale. “I was always busy. But once he lost the election in 2020, people were so pissed, my business doubled. Once he got indicted, my business quadrupled…Now it's insane.”
For Mundy, 65, there is never a dull day, with his phone ringing off the hook with requests for “presidential appearances” at all manner of events – from parades to golf tournaments, and even children’s birthday parties.
A recent viral video, showing an unknown Trump impersonator arriving at a party for an excited young boy, caused a stir online. “Definitely not a cult that hires a Trump impersonator for a kids birthday party,” wrote the account that shared the video.
“Well, they hired a ‘clown.’ So there’s that,” wrote one user. “This is the creepiest thing I've ever seen,” said another, with another user adding: “i cant believe america is real.” “Dude this shit is genuinely dystopian wtf,” wrote a fourth.
Such perceptions don’t faze Mundy. “I just got off the phone with a woman for her five-year-old’s party,” he says. “But my s*** is pretty raunchy…We're in negotiations. It's at a bowling alley, and they only have the thing for an hour.”
But he admits that kids’ parties aren’t really his “forte.” “I don’t really do a lot…maybe one or two a month,” he says. Adult events, however, are a different. Mundy says he frequently attends up to five parties per night.
“Everybody wants to do shots with you…if I was single, I'd be in Vegas every weekend,” he says, adding that dinner with his wife is one of the few times he “turns off” the Donald.
Even a brief Google search for “Trump impersonators” brings up a wide variety of performers charging different prices in different locales. Price listings on Gig Salad, a platform used to book performers, range from a modest $100 up to a whopping $20,000 per appearance.
New York-based Mundy also sells appearances on video message platform Cameo starting at just $30, but is more coy about the total sums he pulls in from his work. “I don't think I should really be telling you [how much]... I'll get us in trouble,” he chuckles.
Despite a glut of Trump’s available for hire online, Mundy admits he does not know any other impersonators personally, and looks at their content only to “check out the competition.” Nothing he has seen so far concern him, however. “I consider myself the best in the world,” he says.
Though a Trumpian sense of confidence in one’s ability is common among those who take on the role, Mundy’s somewhat cutthroat approach is not shared by all.
“I don’t see the others as competition...I get along with everybody,” says Eddie Tyson, another veteran impersonator, based out of Dunedin, Florida.
“It's all in fun. I enjoy my work…I don't have to do this, I enjoy it, and when it gets to the point where I don't enjoy doing it anymore, I'm not going to do it anymore. It's crazy, and it's fun, but you know what? I'm giving back.”
Though, like Mundy, he wants to be the best there is, Tyson is less territorial. His friend John Morgan, 68, a singer-songwriter who Tyson regards as “the best damn George W Bush impersonator there is,” has also transitioned onto the Trump scene. They share tips.
Morgan, a former refrigerator salesman, has now been playing Trump for six years, and admits that impersonating a sitting president is an extremely lucrative business. He estimates he made over a million dollars doing Bush over the past 20 years, and had a heck of a time doing it.
“I became addicted to it,” he tells The Independent. “Of course when Obama became president, I couldn't do Obama…it’s politically incorrect. But I kept doing George W.” He tells The Independent that a couple of years ago his wife suffered a serious medical incident which “took me out of the mood” for performing.
Trump brought him out of the slump.
“Now that he’s is back in office, I'm really going to go for it full bar,” he says. “And my intent is to be gracious and kind and help other people. But at the end of the day, I want to be the number one George W and Donald Trump impersonator in America.”
Another common theme of all serious Trump impersonators is their genuine respect for the commander-in-chief - although Mundy considers himself to be “more right wing than the president.”
Even, Tyson and Morgan, who have also spent years playing Democratic president Bill Clinton, classify themselves as Republicans and Trump supporters.
“It took me some time to come to understand Donald Trump, but I do believe that his heart is in the right place,” says Morgan. “I do believe that he loves this country and that he wants what's best for this country and for the world, in fact.”
Tyson adds: “I like him. He tells it like it is. There's no beating around the bush about him.”
While the 47th President may not beat around the bush, Tyson understands that there has to be boundaries to his performances.
“I don't do anything to embarrass him,” he says. “You know… if you get out and you do something stupid and make him look like a fool, he knows everybody in the IRS. He'll send Elon Musk after you.”
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