With President Donald Trump’s former reality TV show ‘The Apprentice,’ streaming on Amazon Prime as of last month, politically astute viewers across the political spectrum have zeroed in on an episode from when Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., now one of the president’s biggest political detractors, praised his fellow New Yorker as a business prodigy.

During Season 5, Episode 8, of ‘The Apprentice’ in 2006, contestants were given a challenge — as was typical during each episode — and the winners of said challenge got the chance to fly to the nation’s capital and have breakfast with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. During the breakfast, Schumer sought to draw parallels between his family and Trump’s, while also showering praise on the president, telling the contestants he always knew Trump, even as a young person, ‘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 during breakfast at the famous Hay-Adams hotel in Washington, D.C. ‘His father, and my grandfather, were builders together in Brooklyn.’

‘Wow!?’ one contestant could be heard replying. ‘Really?’ asked another.

‘Yeah!,’ Schumer responded to the room. 

The show then cut to Schumer lauding Trump as a business prodigy.

‘Even when [Trump] was much younger, you knew that he was going to go places,’ Schumer said, before a voice-over from one of the contestants present at the breakfast reiterated that ‘Sen. Schumer and Mr. Trump are good friends.’

Despite Schumer’s apparent friendly sentiment towards the president in 2006, as evidenced by his appearance on ‘The Apprentice,’ the Democratic New York senator told Politico in 2016, ahead of Trump’s first term, that, ‘[Trump] was not my friend.’ Rather, Schumer described his relationship with Trump as a ‘casual acquaintance.’

‘Donald Trump is a lawless, angry man,’ Schumer said of the president during an interview last 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 post on social media earlier this month.

Considering Schumer’s vehement animosity towards Trump today, Michigan State GOP Sen. Aric Nesbitt, the Michigan Senate’s minority leader, remarked ‘How things change…’ in a post that highlighted the resurfaced clip of Schumer’s scene on ‘The Apprentice.’  

But it’s not just Republicans having fun 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 before taking office during his first term, Trump was asked by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski about whether he will be able to get along with Democratic leaders in Congress, such as Schumer. Trump struck a positive chord, saying at 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 said at the time.

As time has progressed, however, Trump’s rhetoric towards Schumer has become increasingly critical of the senator, as the pair of political heavyweights continue to fight over whatever political issue is dominating Washington each week. 

Recently, Trump took a jab at Schumer’s alleged lack of support for the Jewish community amid the rise in antisemitism, particularly on college campuses, in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks against innocent Israelis. Schumer is Jewish. 

‘Schumer is a Palestinian, as far as I’m concerned,’ Trump told reporters from the Oval Office last month. ‘He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore.’ 

Trump’s comments from earlier this month also mirror a similar sentiment he relayed about Schumer during his most recent campaign for the presidency, referring to him as a ‘proud member of Hamas.’

In addition to Schumer, other high-profile public figures have praised the now-president, only to become his political enemy years later. In a 1988 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the celebrity talk show host appeared to be amazed at Americans’ ‘fascination’ with Donald Trump and even described him as a ‘folk hero’ for being so popular. 

Meanwhile, celebrity music producer who co-founded Def Jam Records, Russell Simmons, similarly had nice things to say about Trump before he entered politics, calling him ‘very nice’ and remarking how supportive Trump has been to his family, according to media reports. Nonetheless, following the tragic politically motivated violence in Charlottesville during Trump’s first term, Simmons reportedly criticized his ‘friend’ for leading 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 News Digital reached out to Schumer’s office for comment but did not receive a reply in time for publication.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., on Monday signaled he wouldn’t tolerate Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth allegedly once again sharing sensitive information about military operations in a Signal group chat. 

‘If the reporting is true, this is unacceptable. I would never tell the White House what to do, but I wouldn’t tolerate it,’ Bacon told Fox News Digital, reiterating his comments first reported by Politico. 

Bacon, a retired military officer and Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said it would be ‘unacceptable’ if Hegseth sent classified information in a Signal chat about a mission in Yemen targeting the Houthis. The New York Times reported on Sunday that Hegseth shared information about the March 15 strikes in Yemen in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, claiming they were essentially the same plans shared in the separate Signal chat that included an editor of The Atlantic. 

Bacon told Politico he had reservations about Hegseth’s experience since his nomination, and while a spokesperson for Bacon’s office emphasized to Fox News Digital that he would not tell President Donald Trump to fire Hegseth, Bacon said he ‘wouldn’t tolerate’ the latest Hegseth reporting if he was the commander in chief. 

White House officials have joined Hegseth in denying the reporting. 

‘No matter how many times the legacy media tries to resurrect the same nonstory, they can’t change the fact that no classified information was shared. Recently fired ‘leakers’ are continuing to misrepresent the truth to soothe their shattered egos and undermine the president’s agenda, but the administration will continue to hold them accountable,’ White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told Fox News Digital.

Trump himself shut down the reporting, calling it ‘fake news’ and touting recruitment rates and Hegseth’s leadership of the armed forces.

‘The president stands strongly behind Secretary Hegseth, who is doing a phenomenal job leading the Pentagon,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News on Monday. 

Hegseth lamented ‘disgruntled employees’ and ‘anonymous smears’ when pressed by reporters during the White House Easter Egg roll about the latest Signal controversy.

‘This is why we’re fighting the fake news media. This group right here is full of hoaxsters,’ Hegseth said.

The Trump administration has maintained that no classified material was transmitted in the Signal chat reported by The Atlantic. Signal is an encrypted messaging app with additional security measures that keep messages private to those included in the correspondence.

Fox News Digtal’s Emma Colton contributed to this report.

President Trump indicated Monday – following news of Pope Francis’s death – that he and first lady Melania Trump will be attending the Pope’s funeral at the Vatican, despite the president’s somewhat contentious history with the late leader of the Catholic Church.

Traditionally, papal funerals take place four to six days following their death, so Francis’s funeral is expected to take place before the end of the month. Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni told reporters that the General Congregation of Cardinals will occur Tuesday morning, during which an exact date for the funeral should be decided.

‘Melania and I will be going to the funeral of Pope Francis, in Rome,’ Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social on Monday afternoon. ‘We look forward to being there!’

Trump’s announcement that he would be traveling to Rome for the ceremony followed a separate announcement he made earlier in the day indicating that he had ordered all American flags on government grounds, including military installments and embassies abroad, to fly at half-staff until sunset Monday.

Trump’s relationship with Pope Francis over the years was one marked by ideological differences and – at times – tension.

Amid Trump’s first run for office, Pope Francis criticized one of Trump’s signature campaign promises of building a wall along the southern border, calling the move ‘not Christian’ in 2016.

‘A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,’ Francis told reporters during a mid-flight interview on his way to Mexico in 2016, according to a translation from the Associated Press.

Trump, meanwhile, shot back at the pontiff’s remarks, arguing it was ‘disgraceful’ for the Pope, or any religious leader for that matter, to question another person’s faith. 

‘If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened,’ Trump said in a statement released by his team following the Pope’s criticism. ‘ISIS would have been eradicated unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.’

During Francis’s life he also took aim at increasing nationalistic sentiments around the world, criticism that implicitly targeted Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda. 

Francis was also a believer in climate change posing a major problem for society, something Trump also differed with him on. In both Trump’s first and second terms, he has pulled the U.S. out of the international Paris Climate Accords, which is an international initiative aimed at mitigating global warming. 

Trump, who considers himself a Christian but is not a Catholic, only met with Francis once during his first term. By contrast, Joe Biden, who is a confirmed Catholic, met with Francis in-person on multiple occasions throughout his single-term presidency. 

Trump’s Vice President J.D. Vance, a Catholic himself, was notably one of the Pope’s last visitors, seeing him on Easter Sunday – one day before Francis passed.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.