Arnold Schwarzenegger may have taken over President Donald Trump‘s hosting duties on The Celebrity Apprentice, but the two men definitely don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things.
Most recently, the former governor of California spoke out about Trump’s executive order to ban travel by refugees and immigrants from seven countries, saying that it makes the United States look “stupid.”
“I think the real problem is that it was vetted badly,” Schwarzenegger said Monday in an interview on Extra. “If they would run this by the Justice Department and Homeland Security… and had the lawyers really study and focus on it, and give it some time to do it the right way.”
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Schwarzenegger himself came to the U.S. from Austria in 1968 (at the young age of 21), and identifies with the refugees now effectively banned from entering the country.
“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,” continued Schwarzenegger. “It’s crazy, and makes us look stupid when the White House is ill-prepared to put this kind of executive order out there.”
Schwarzenegger was governor of California from 2003 to 2011, so arguably has more governmental experience than the new president. The Republican actor says, too, that he had difficulty adjusting from a life of celebrity to a life of politics, so he hopes Trump learns from this executive-order backlash.
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“The laws that stick the longest are the ones when both parties work together,” he said, adding that this should be a “wake-up call” for Trump.
At the beginning of January, Trump mocked Schwarzenegger’s Apprentice ratings.
The then-president-elect posted two tweets blasting what he interpreted as Schwarzenegger’s ineffectiveness as host. He goes on to call himself a “ratings machine,” and claims that he was a far superior host.
“Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got ‘swamped’ (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT,” he wrote. “So much for being a movie star-and that was season 1 compared to season 14. Now compare him to my season 1. But who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary.”
A few hours after the posting, a measured, calm Schwarzenegger replied to Trump’s tweets, directing him to a quote by former U.S. president Abraham Lincoln from his inauguaration:
The New Celebrity Apprentice premiered on Jan. 2 with Schwarzenegger at the helm, and Entertainment Weekly reports that the new iteration lost nearly half its adult audience (in the 18-49 demo rating) compared to its previous version two years ago. Overall, the show’s viewership dropped 44 per cent from the 2015 debut, when Trump was still host.
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Since then, Apprentice ratings have sagged to record-low numbers.
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