ry week is completely disqualifying for Trump, and that is the idea that Trump is running a slow motion coup as he, as Bill Maher calls it, and that he knows that Trump will never give up power. Now he believes that January 6 was an example of that. However, he is deeply within the hoax realm because Trump did give up power. He literally gave it up. He gave it up. Well, I don't know what show he was watching, but the one I watched, he lost the election. He complained, which we all have a right to, and then he peacefully left and then ran for election again just like the system was designed.

So but in Bill Maher's world, he's already proven that he would not give up power and therefore he might not give it up this time either, you know. And of course he did talk about Trump having a 2028 hat. So Bill Maher believes that Trump is not joking about remaining in power, although he jokes about it a lot.

However, Bill does have a stronger argument when he's watching the feds move their own little private army, so to speak, the National Guard. It's not the feds, but they could nationalize it whenever they want if they had an argument. And he points out that the troops are coming more from southern states. As in it's almost like he's forming a private army.

Do you remember that I said you don't have to worry about the president, any president, but you don't have to worry about Trump trying to take power unless he had his own army because if you don't own the army, there's no way you're going to stay in power. So you would have to have something like Iran has, you know, the Revolutionary Guard or all the dictators have this smaller, highly funded and motivated group that can protect at least the capital. So now he's got his own, this is what Bill Maher would say, he's got his own kind of military that's now guarding the capital conveniently.

Now I would point out that it's not guarding Mar-a-Lago. So it's not like the street gangs can't get to Trump if they want to. I mean, he's going to be golfing and stuff. But on top of that, as Bill Maher correctly points out, the only way you could have any kind of a coup, the kind that people fear, is if you really did start a process by which you were building toward having your own private army to keep you in power.

Now does it look to you like that's what's happening? Do you believe that what you see is Trump starting the beginning of his getting federal eyes under his control? You know, maybe later there's some moves where he fires some National Guard leaders and puts his loyalists in there. You know, maybe something like that.

Well, here's what I think. If you do the first thing I'd worry about is if you do another election with voting machines and mail-in ballots, you're kind of asking for a coup because you're running an election system that at least half of the country, and I believe it's more than half because I think both parties have some questions about these systems. If you're running a system that half of the country does not trust is even a valid way to elect somebody, you're kind of asking for a coup. And I don't mean just Trump. I mean whoever is in power if you keep running a system that the public doesn't trust. Yeah. That doesn't seem like that could go forever.

But in my view, Bill Maher has the TDS problem. His problem with Trump is not the things he's done that we can verify. He mostly likes that stuff. And I'll give you some examples in a minute. It's the things that he worries about that are imaginary. And that's what it's come down to. The smartest people who also have TDS, you know, the well-informed people like Bill, literally have to imagine an imaginary scenario where a very unlikely set of events happen that you could say I told you, didn't you see that coming. So that's imaginary.

But to his credit Bill is also very complimentary. He was on Friday saying how Trump is so good and he gave lots of examples of how he was so good at targeting micro groups within the country and making them happy because he finds their issue that they're tied to. So he used Trump going to reschedule weed as something that the Democrats are just stupid for not doing it first. They just leave it to Trump. And so Maher correctly points out that the people who would really like him to do that or like any leader to reschedule weed, Trump is just going to nail them down. So it'll be one more group of people that Trump gets for free, which is people who consider that one of their top issues.

But then Maher points out accurately that Trump did the same thing with crypto. He became the one that the crypto people like and then he got that tiny little population on his side. He did it with the First Step Act, got the people who were activists in the reform of the justice system, you know, in terms of getting people out of jail early. He did it with your toilets and your showers not having enough water pressure. He did it with plastic straws. He did it with no tax on tips. He did it with Make America Healthy Again. Each of them have a tiny, motivated, really strong set of believers and Trump just checks them off. Go. You want this? No tax on tips. Boom. I won Las Vegas.

And it was sort of full circle for me. Some of you know that in I think it was 2016 I was on his show, *Real Time*, and I predicted that Trump would win. So this was before the election when people were not expecting Trump to win and I said he would win and I said the specific reason is that his persuasive skills were unparalleled. So I gave my reason and my reason did not have to do with policies. I didn't even mention any. It wasn't about his fundraising ability. I said there's one variable. His ability to persuade is like we've never seen and he's going to go right into the White House.

Now you see Bill Maher praising him because he so adeptly can identify these little areas where with just the smallest tweak in what you say about it, you end up owning that whole population, you get them for free. It's like leaving money on the table. Oh, you mean all I have to do is say I'm pro-crypto and then a million more people will start looking at me as a better candidate? All right, let's do it in a reasonable way. I mean, he doesn't do it in a crazy way. He makes sure that these things all make sense in their own way.

But yes, I would say that Bill Maher is now a complete convert as are most of the world by the way. Most of the world caught up with me in 2016 and they now believe that they like to use the term he's the best political athlete. Now I like that but I would say persuasion political athlete is a wider category and I agree with it. He is the best political athlete we've ever seen. But everybody sees the persuasion element now.

And then Bill Maher also astutely mocked Kamala Harris for instead of doing all these real world things that people like, you know, like the straws and the light bulbs and all this stuff, she went after saving democracy. So she went after a concept. Trump went after your toilets, your taxes on tips, your crypto, your weed. Those are all real things. Almost all of those things you can feel or see or you have a memory of it or an image pops into your head. These are really salient. They touch you. You can feel them. You just have a feeling about all those things. And Kamala is going for saving your democracy. And the closest I can get to even understanding that topic would be, wait, what's wrong with our democracy? And the only thing I think that needs to be saved is the credibility of our election systems and Trump's trying to do that.

So anyway, and now Trump is doing more of what Bill Maher correctly points out is part of his persuasion genius of really relating to real people. The fact that he's going after crime and also the beautification of our cities is so right in the heart, isn't it? Because there's nobody who doesn't have a picture in their head of a city with graffiti and garbage and people on the sidewalks. So right away he's in that visual domain and he's telling you he's going to beautify it and make it beautiful and clean it up and get rid of the crime. The crime is also something you feel. I don't feel a loss of democracy, but I definitely feel the danger of crime and stuff.

But listen to this statement. So Trump said recently, and I quote, and listen how visual this is. Quote, "We are going to make DC totally safe." Trump said, "When people come from Iowa, Indiana, all the big beautiful places, they're not going to go home in a body bag." Oh my god. They're not going to go home in a body bag. You see it, right? You see the bag and you can almost see yourself on the in