If, as expected, California Gov. Gavin Newsom runs for president, you can count on seeing Josh Meyers spoofing him on “Saturday Night Live.”
Meyers, the brother of New Hampshire-raised “SNL” alum Seth Meyers and an occasional Newsom impersonator, made a surprise appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Tuesday and did a decent job caricaturing the Democratic governor – while the real deal looked on.
Wearing a tailored suit and white collared shirt (no tie) à la Newsom, Meyers turned up on a skateboard to greet Newsom. “Oh, man. I am so psyched to be here for a Newsom twosome,” Meyers said. “I mean, I just came from a ribbon-cutting sesh at a shelter for non-binary chihuahuas.”
Meyers then presented Newsom with a giant trophy for his “tireless work uniting the people of Cali” – “from the meth dealers of Riverside to the shapely Armenians of the Glendale Galleria; from chakra doulas and yoga thems to farmers market furries and rollerbladers with gluten sensitivities.”
Calling Newsom “Gov. Gav,” Meyers’ imposter pol said the trophy was “plated with platinum that was ethically sourced from all my expired AMEX cards. And it holds an entire magnum of this thick-ass Sauv Blanc.”
Newsom was on Kimmel’s show for the same reason he’s seemingly everywhere at the moment – he was hyping his new book, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery,” a memoir in which, one reviewer wrote, Newsom grapples with his tendency to be both “irritatingly slick and refreshingly resolute.”
Newsom didn’t make any news in his sitdown with Kimmel, but he did relate a phone conversation he had with President Trump a year ago, just before the president deployed 700 Marines to Los Angeles. He said the president wasn’t interested in talking policy.
“He goes, ‘Hey Gav, what do you think about Newscum? It’s pretty original, right?’” Newsom told Kimmel. “I said, ‘Actually, it’s not. There was an eighth-grade bully that did that when I was a kid.’”
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com. Follow him @MarkAShanahan.