Baldwin’s Trump impression extended to satirical memoir

On the phone from New York, Alec Baldwin chuckles in response to a question about how he’s doing.

“I’m spending the day talking about Trump, so how good could I be?” he asks.

Specifically, he's scheduled for a day of press about his new book with humorist Kurt Andersen, “You Can’t Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year as President.”

It's their idea of what an honest memoir written by the U.S. president might look like, inspired by Trump’s unbridled, unrehearsed communication style.

The Trump that Baldwin and Andersen have imagined never pauses to consider how brash or ridiculous his selfaggrandizing monologues might sound to other people. The book paints Trump as a petty narcissist with no selfawareness who congratulates himself, at 71, for remaining married to a 47-year-old.

“What we decided is, Trump is basically incapable of being reflective,” says Baldwin, who has famously impersonated Trump on “Saturday Night Live,” in a recent interview.

“What would Trump sound like if he tried to be reflective? He would mess that up, obviously.”

Baldwin says he welcomed the opportunity to extend his “SNL” impression to a longer, more detailed characterization. But the character is the same, he says: the Trump of the book, like the Trump of “SNL,” is unhappy.

“I’ve chosen to play him filled with bile,” he says. “Trump is miserable no matter what happens. If he wins the election, he’s miserable. If he loses, he’s miserable. I just tried to make him the most miserable person I possibly could.”