ut will be gone. So but I also wonder did we think that the WEF, World Economic Forum, was the shadow government until DOGE discovered that USAID was a shadow government at least for the United States and for a lot of countries it affected. So maybe we just like having the idea there's a shadow government, but as soon as you see that what USAID was doing, that looks like the real one and then the World Economic Forum again just looks like a rich person's club. So Klaus is stepping down.

Trump called the situation in France where Marine Le Pen who was the front runner for the presidency got taken out by lawfare or at least that's what it looks like from this part of the world and Trump called it a witch hunt and said it was the same playbook that was used against Trump to take him out. Now do you buy that? Do you buy that it wasn't a legitimate prosecution? It maybe wouldn't have happened to anybody else and that it was completely political and it was for the purpose of taking her out of the election. I do. I do now, could be wrong maybe, but we live in a world where unfortunately that would be the most obvious and routine thing that would happen because we're seeing it in other places.

You know, it seems to me that remember when the first time you learned that George Soros had figured out that the best way to control the country is to control the prosecutors and maybe some judges. Because if you get the attorney generals and the prosecutors on your side, you can kind of control the legal system. And if you control the legal system, you are the government because you can take out a candidate. If you can take out a candidate like Trump or you can take out Marine Le Pen, you're kind of the government. And remember how clever that seemed? We thought, man, this Soros guy is so clever. He figured out the least expensive way to control a country. Then he was controlling the United States, it felt like. And then we learned that USAID has been doing exactly that to other countries massively and for decades.

So apparently one of the first things we do when we want to control another country is we look to control their courts. We try to get a judge and prosecutors that we can control or bribe or somehow have some influence over. So it does seem that all governments that you would call part of the democratic world, they all seem fake because I believe that if your court system has been corrupted and that certainly is the case in the United States, seems to be the case in France, probably the case in every country that USAID was working in. I'm not sure any of the democracies are real. I think that they might all be pretend and that the real government is whoever put in the corrupt judges.

You know, remember Joe Biden and the prosecutor, he said, "Well, we won't release your billion dollars to Ukraine unless you get rid of that prosecutor." That was just this. It looks like it was just another case where we couldn't control Ukraine unless we could control their judges and prosecutors. So it looks like that's what he was doing. So once you learn that the governments all look fake, they all look fake.

If you look at let's say an election in the United States, do you think it will be determined by the candidates and the voters or will it be determined by whatever corrupt judges decide is going to be legal today? I think the judges can change the rules. They'll decide what's in, do you need voter ID? Are you going to reapportion the district so that you get more representatives? I think the courts kind of control democracy and so to me everything looks fake as long as the courts and the judges don't look credible and they don't look credible at this point. So there's that.

So Laura Loomer made some news by apparently she had identified some what Glenn Greenwald calls three pro-war members of the National Security Council and she talked to Trump and Trump fired them immediately. Now how do you interpret that if you're an anti-Trumper? You say to yourself, "What? This Laura Loomer conspiracy theory lady is so powerful. She's causing policy to happen in the White House. Is that what's happening?"

Let me give you my frame on this. I've said this a number of times about Trump. One of his superpowers, one of his strengths is that he's really good at listening to everybody. He'll listen to Bill Maher. He listened to me when I visited. He'll listen to Rock, he'll listen to Laura Loomer, but you will also listen to Scott Bessent and all the top economists and you'll listen to other world leaders. And he's really good at scanning the room and listening.

Now, the other thing I teach you is that the person with the best ideas is always in charge. So Laura Loomer must have done some research or had some information that Trump was not aware of and she had credibility from other interactions. So he was willing to give her a listen. She described these people and why she thinks that they were dangerous to keep on because they're kind of pro-war, you know, maybe not as pro-Trump as they could be. And he decided because he's the decider. That's a good point. I didn't know about that. They're gone. I don't have any problem with that at all. To me that all looks positive. The positive part is that Trump is always scanning his base to find out what they think and listening to suggestions.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that somebody made a suggestion to the Trump White House and then when it got to Trump, he said, "Huh, pretty good idea. Let's do that." It's very common and I don't think any other president has had the confidence or just the vision to see what everybody wants and to be able to decide, oh, I like that one. I don't like this one. I like this one. I don't like that one. So I love the fact that Loomer could come in with some information of value because otherwise Trump wouldn't have acted if it had no value and he acted on it. So I don't think that story is about Loomer. But she's doing a hell of a job of making herself relevant in the entire political process. So hats off to that. But this is a Trump story and Trump doing the thing I like best about him, listening, taking people seriously and then acting without any hesitation.

I saw a video of Chuck Schumer in 1996 and he's basically sounding exactly like Elon Musk talking about immigration and Schumer in 1996 he's arguing in the Congress and he says the number one reason that illegals come to the US is so they can defraud programs like Social Security. Does that sound familiar? It's 1996 and it's Chuck Schumer. Now today he would say exactly the opposite. Oh, stop accusing those illegals. There's nothing going on. Completely opposite.

Now that's not the only person who's on video doing things that look sort of opposite based on today. According to the Wall Street Apes account, in 1996 Pelosi was encouraging Congress to back reciprocal tariffs. Do you think she's doing it today? Probably not. In 2008 Bernie Sanders wanted tariffs because he says jobs are going overseas. Actually Bernie might be consistent. I think he might, I'll have to check on that, but I think Bernie might be consistent because I think he agreed with Trump on some tariff stuff. And in 2018 Barack Obama called for reciprocal tariffs. Do you think he's doing it today?

So here's my take on Republicans versus Democrats. My observation having spent a lot of time with both is that Republicans have core beliefs. Now I know that sounds funny because you think everybody has core beliefs but I don't think so. I think Republicans have core beliefs and they don't really change. And Democrats have performances. So one has core beliefs and you could predict if you found a video of a Republican talking 20 years ago, would it look that different from a Republican talking today? I feel like it would look essentially the same. Whereas the Democrats, you can always go back and find them having the opposite opinion. The indication to me is that one group is performing and one group is acting on their actual core beliefs. And once you see it, you can't unsee it.

But let me give you another example here. According to Rasmussen polling, Stephen A. Smith, you know, would you call him an entertainer or ESPN commentator? Let's call him Stephen A. Smith, that if you throw him in the mix for potential candidates to be president of the Democrats, he actually scores pretty well. So let's see, 33% of likely US voters view him favorably. And in a hypothetical matchup 31% would vote for Newsom but 28% for Stephen A. Smith. And he would do about the same against AOC. So he's not the leading person, but he's also not running at all. I mean I think he's been pretty clear that even being considered a presidential candidate is less about him. I like the way he says this by the way. It's less about him and more about the complete lack of good candidates. He's totally right about that.

But here's the thing. Stephen A. Smith is a performer. Now he's a commentator but what makes him extra good at his job is that he performs. Like he goes big when he comments and that makes him hard to look away. I find him totally engaging and very skilled at doing what he does, which is get your attention, hold your attention. My experience is if I come across a clip of Stephen A. Smith, it's hard to stop watching it because he's just so high energy and he makes sense most of the time. But he's a performer, so that makes sense in the Democrat world. Find a performer because it's all performance.

Well, there's a study by, well, the Post is writing about it. It was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin that says that liberals show less empathy to political opponents than conservatives do. So liberals would care less if conservatives had something bad happen to them, whereas conservatives might deeply disagree with the liberals but wouldn't find pleasure in seeing something bad happen to them. Is that surprising? Nope.

Bec