When President Donald Trump jabbed former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger’s TV ratings during the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday morning, the current host of NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice” had a suggestion: Take my job, then.
In return, Schwarzenegger offered to switch spots and take over running the free world.
“Hey Donald, I have a great idea,” Schwarzenegger said in a video posted to his Twitter. “Why don’t we switch jobs? You take over TV because you’re such an expert in ratings, and I take over your job — and then people can finally sleep comfortably again, hmm?”
A spokesman for the former governor also offered a pointed rebuttal: “Arnold is praying that President Trump can start improving his own approval ratings, which were the worst in history for an incoming president, by taking his job seriously and working inclusively," spokesman Daniel Ketchell told ABC News.
According to the Gallup tracking poll, Trump’s initial approval rating as president was lower than that of any of his predecessors since Dwight Eisenhower.
Schwarzenegger’s return fire followed Trump’s criticism at the National Prayer Breakfast of Schwarzenegger’s ratings since he took over the spinoff show.
“They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take pace my place, and we know how that turned out,” said Trump, who remains an executive producer of the show. “The ratings went right down the tubes. It's been a total disaster... I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can, for those ratings, okay?”
It wasn’t the first time the president and the former bodybuilder-turned-Republican-governor have clashed over the latter’s performance on television. Trump criticized Schwarzenegger’s ratings in a series of tweets last month, prompting the current host to reply to Trump that “there’s nothing more important than the people’s work.”
Schwarzenegger, who was born in Austria and gained American citizenship in 1983, is constitutionally ineligible for the presidency.