Arnold Schwarzenegger says Donald Trump won't let go of their ongoing feud because 'he's in love with me' and 'wants to be me'
Actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger mocked President Donald Trump after he suggested in an interview on Tuesday that the president would not let go of their years-long feud because "he is in love with me."
Schwarzenegger, while talking to Men's Health online about his continuing beef with Trump, said: "I think he really — he’s in love with me. That’s the reality of it. With Trump, he wants to be me."
This was the latest salvo amidst an ongoing squabble between the celebrities-turned-politicians about the reality series 'Celebrity Apprentice.' The former California governor, in 2017, had said that he would step down as host of the series because of the "baggage" of Trump's association with the show, on which he was the previous host.
"I loved every second of working with NBC and Mark Burnett. Everyone—from the celebrities to the crew to the marketing department—was a straight 10, and I would absolutely work with all of them again on a show that doesn’t have this baggage," Schwarzenegger told Variety at the time.
Trump, earlier this year, while speaking at a social media summit at the White House, had bizarrely declared Schwarzenegger dead despite him being very much alive. Trump told the press: “MSNBC, they’re stone cold crazy. I made them a lot of money with 'The Apprentice', and I gave them a top show when they were dying on NBC. But they don’t like me too much. They wanted a big extension. They used Arnold Schwarzenegger instead. Big movie star. You know what? He died. He died. I was there 12 years, 14 seasons and then they pick a movie actor and he dies on us.”
Yahoo News White House correspondent Hunter Walker, who was at the event, later clarified in a tweet that the "president was talking about 'The Apprentice' ratings when he quipped that Schwarzenegger ‘died’."
Schwarzenegger, in his latest interview, recalled his earlier relationship with Trump, saying the president had "great admiration" for people who wrestled.
"I remember that in the old days, when we went to the wrestling matches, the way he admired people with bodies, and the way they would jump around in the ring, and to perform physical stunts and stuff like that,” he said. “He had great admiration for that.”
“He asked me, ‘How do you do that, with the movies? I mean, it’s so believable.’ He drilled down to specific questions that fascinated him. It was about, ‘How do you sell something?’ Like, a scene. ‘How do you go and act out a scene so that I get affected emotionally?’ He was fascinated by that," Schwarzenegger remembered. ”‘How do you do this when you do interviews – that you penetrate through it and you then are totally believable?’”