With President Donald Trump’s former actuality TV present “The Apprentice,” streaming on Amazon Prime as of final month, politically astute viewers throughout the political spectrum have zeroed in on an episode from when Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, now one of many president’s greatest political detractors, praised his fellow New Yorker as a enterprise prodigy.
Throughout Season 5, Episode 8, of “The Apprentice” in 2006, contestants got a problem — as was typical throughout every episode — and the winners of mentioned problem obtained the prospect to fly to the nation’s capital and have breakfast with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY In the course of the breakfast, Schumer sought to attract parallels between his household and Trump’s, whereas additionally showering reward on the president, telling the contestants he all the time knew Trump, at the same time as an adolescent, “was going to go places.”
“I was born in Brooklyn, the same place where Donald Trump’s family comes from,” Schumer reminisced with the contestants throughout breakfast on the well-known Hay-Adams resort in Washington, DC.
“His father, and my grandfather, were builders together in Brooklyn.”
“Wow!?” one contestant may very well be heard replying. “Really?” requested one other.
“Yeah!,” Schumer responded to the room.
The present then minimize to Schumer lauding Trump as a enterprise prodigy.
“Even when [Trump] was much younger, you knew that he was going to go places,” Schumer mentioned, earlier than a voice-over from one of many contestants current on the breakfast reiterated that “Sen. Schumer and Mr. Trump are good friends.”
Regardless of Schumer’s obvious pleasant sentiment in direction of the president in 2006, as evidenced by his look on “The Apprentice,” the Democratic New York senator informed Politico in 2016, forward of Trump’s first time period, that, “[Trump] was not my friend.”
Moderately, Schumer described his relationship with Trump as a “casual acquaintance.”
“Donald Trump is a lawless, angry man,” Schumer mentioned of the president throughout an interview final month. “The fact that The Apprentice President Donald ‘You’re Fired’ Trump is refusing to hold people accountable just shows how weak he is,” Schumer added in a publish on social media earlier this month.
Contemplating Schumer’s vehement animosity in direction of Trump at present, Michigan State GOP Sen. Aric Nesbitt, the Michigan Senate’s minority chief, remarked “How things change…” in a publish that highlighted the resurfaced clip of Schumer’s scene on “The Apprentice.”
Nevertheless it’s not simply Republicans having enjoyable at Schumer’s expense.
“As Schumer sells out our Constitution and democracy, you just gotta watch this clip of him sucking up to Trump on an episode of the Apprentice,” remarked former Democratic Rhode Island legislator Aaron Regunberg. “What a world class slug of a man.”
Shortly earlier than taking workplace throughout his first time period, Trump was requested by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski about whether or not he’ll have the ability to get together with Democratic leaders in Congress, corresponding to Schumer. Trump struck a optimistic chord, saying on the time that he thought he would “be able to get along well with Chuck Schumer.”
“I was always very good with Schumer. I was close to Schumer in many ways,” Trump mentioned on the time.
As time has progressed, nonetheless, Trump’s rhetoric in direction of Schumer has develop into more and more vital of the senator, because the pair of political heavyweights proceed to battle over no matter political difficulty is dominating Washington every week.
Just lately, Trump took a jab at Schumer’s alleged lack of help for the Jewish group amid the rise in antisemitism, notably on faculty campuses, within the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 assaults towards harmless Israelis. Schumer is Jewish.
“Schumer is a Palestinian, as far as I’m concerned,” Trump informed reporters from the Oval Workplace final month. “He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore.”
Trump’s feedback from earlier this month additionally mirror an identical sentiment he relayed about Schumer throughout his most up-to-date marketing campaign for the presidency, referring to him as a “proud member of Hamas.”
Along with Schumer, different high-profile public figures have praised the now-president, solely to develop into his political enemy years later. In a 1988 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the superstar discuss present host gave the impression to be amazed at Individuals’ “fascination” with Donald Trump and even described him as a “folk hero” for being so fashionable.
In the meantime, superstar music producer who co-founded Def Jam Information, Russell Simmons, equally had good issues to say about Trump earlier than he entered politics, calling him “very nice” and remarking how supportive Trump has been to his household, in response to media studies.
Nonetheless, following the tragic politically motivated violence in Charlottesville throughout Trump’s first time period, Simmons reportedly criticized his “friend” for main the legacy of a “great divider,” and a “destroyer of the environment and … everything we as Americans have fought so hard to call ours.”
Fox Information Digital reached out to Schumer’s workplace for remark however didn’t obtain a reply in time for publication.
