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George W. Bush Forgives Will Ferrell. So Does Alec Baldwin Have a Chance With Trump?

2 minute read

Any American President should know that they’re going to spend most of their time in office being mocked on Saturday Night Live. But George W. Bush seems to have a great sense of humor about Will Ferrell’s famous impression of him.

“Not at all,” the former president responded on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Thursday night when asked if the impressions ever bothered him. He recounted a story about how Ferrell’s impression was so good, he even thought he had said some of the lines from it.

“I had dinner with Lorne Michaels, the head of Saturday Night Live, and he said, ‘I put a great speechwriter on you, and he came up with ‘strategery,”’ Bush said, referencing one of Ferrell’s most famous fake Bush malapropisms. “And I said, ‘Wait a minute, I said strategery. And he said, ‘No, you didn’t say trategery.’ I said, ‘I damn sure said strategery.’ He said, ‘We invented it.’ I said, ‘Well, let me ask you this: Did he come up with ‘misunderestimate?’” (Bush actually did say ‘misunderestimate’ in a speech.) You can watch the exchange above.

The new President hasn’t taken as kindly to Alec Baldwin‘s Saturday Night Live interpretation of him. Donald Trump has pilloried Baldwin and the show on Twitter, tweeting things like, “Saturday Night Live is the worst of NBC. Not funny, cast is terrible, always a complete hit job. Really bad television!”

 

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Write to Tessa Berenson at tessa.Rogers@time.com