Sarah Cooper’s viral videos impersonating Donald Trump may finally get the audience she’s apparently eluded all along: the current president of the United States. Donald Trump will apparently seek out Cooper’s videos now that they were brought up to him during an interview on Fox News on Sunday where he was encouraged to check them out.
Cooper’s Trump impersonation has made her a viral star in recent months, snagging an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live and helping her secure both a Netflix special and the chance to turn her book into a CBS sitcom. But the videos, while hugely popular on social media sites like TikTok and Twitter, had apparently not crossed the feeds of Trump.
That changed on Sunday when the president was asked directly about Cooper in an interview on Fox News. Yahoo snagged video of a preview of that interview, which included an exchange between Trump and Steve Hilton. In it, Trump says he hasn’t seen the videos, but is encouraged to watch them even if they are not necessarily meant to show the president in a positive light.
Here’s how the exchange went down, as told by CNN:
“I have not, no,” Trump said, blank-faced. “I’d like to see them. Are they good or bad?”
Hilton told Trump he thought the president would find them very entertaining.
“OK, good! I’d like to see them,” Trump said. “If you’re saying they’re positive, I’d like to look. If they’re not positive….”
Hilton acknowledged that Cooper “doesn’t mean it to be positive.”
“I see,” Trump said. “Well, I’ll have to check it out.”
This certainly makes sense, as Trump’s social media presence is a tight circle of people expressing their support for him online. It’s a far cry from the other parts of the internet, where Cooper’s “How to Medical” video have garnered more than 20 million views. Cooper also appeared at the all-virtual Democratic National Convention last week, an event Trump claimed to watch but later incorrectly said the Democrats wiped the phrase “under God” from the pledge of allegiance when it was, in fact, not.
Trump impersonator and comedian Sarah Cooper: “I have heard Donald Trump say some pretty unhinged things. I have heard them over and over and over again. But nothing is more dangerous to our democracy than his attacks on mail-in voting during a pandemic.” https://t.co/GtFLIpIPzX pic.twitter.com/bZM8Xa3sa7
— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 21, 2020
Many people have speculated online about whether Trump has seen her videos and, of course, what he thinks of them. According to the interview, he has not. But he definitely knows about them now.