The former California governor, who hosts reality show, said people could ‘sleep comfortably again’ if he replaced Trump, who asked crowd to pray for low ratings

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Arnold Schwarzenegger has told Donald Trump that the two men should swap jobs so “people can finally sleep comfortably again” after the US president joked about his TV ratings at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday.

The Terminator star and former governor of California has replaced Trump as the host of what is now called The New Celebrity Apprentice. Before being sworn in as president last month, Trump attacked his successor’s ratings for the first episode of the show, tweeting: “Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got ‘swamped’ (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT.”

During Thursday morning’s National Prayer Breakfast, an annual faith gathering of religious leaders and members of Congress, Trump returned to the theme:

They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. And we know how that turned out. The ratings went right down the tubes. It’s been a total disaster. And Mark [Burnett, the creator of Apprentice] will never, ever bet against Trump again.

He then called on religious leaders to pray.

“I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can, for those ratings,” said the president.

In response, Schwarznegger took a dig at Trump in a Twitter video:



“Hey Donald, I have a great idea. Why don’t we switch jobs? You take over TV, since you’re such an expert in ratings, and I’ll take over your job, and then people can finally sleep comfortably again,” he declared, raising his eyebrows at the camera.

Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) The National Prayer Breakfast? pic.twitter.com/KYUqEZbJIE

Within 30 minutes, Schwarzenegger’s post had 10,000 retweets.

The ratings of Celebrity Apprentice have dropped this year, down 16% this week in the 18-49 age demographic, a season low.

As a Republican governor of California from 2003 to 2011, Schwarzenegger focused much of his political career on increasing clean energy and climate change mitigation.

Before last year’s election, he said he would not vote for Trump, making it the first time he didn’t vote for a GOP candidate since becoming a US citizen in 1983 after he emigrated from Austria.

The former professional bodybuilder also publicly criticized Trump’s travel ban this week, calling it “vetted badly”.

“To go and ban people who have a green card, that means that the United States of America has given you permission to work here permanently and you are on the way to permanent citizenship … I was in that position … It’s crazy, it’s crazy and makes us look stupid when the White House is ill-prepared to put this kind of executive order out there,” he told entertainment TV host Mario Lopez on Extra.