Arnold Schwarzenegger Responds After Donald Trump Says He Died: ‘I’m Still Here. Want To Compare Tax Returns?’
Arnold Schwarzenegger had no time for Donald Trump’s odd slam this week, clapping back after the president claimed he watched Schwarzenegger die.
Trump took aim at the former California governor and his successor as host of the Celebrity Apprentice series, saying at a summit of conservative social media figures that Schwarzenegger was “dead.”
“Arnold Schwarzenegger … You know what? He died … I was there,” Trump said at the event, via a tweet from Yahoo News White House correspondent Hunter Walker.
The entire conference was surrounded in controversy, with Trump inviting a number of divisive social media figures to the conference that claimed social media outlets were trying to drown out conservative voices. Those invited included Ali Alexander, a far-right figure who pushed the false idea that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is not really black and that her citizenship is questionable.
Walker added that Trump wasn’t referring to Arnold’s actual death in his remark at the conference, but instead the dip in ratings on The Apprentice after Trump left the series. The two have been trading barbs since Schwarzenegger’s time as host of the show, especially after Arnold took a backhanded jab at the controversy Trump had created.
After the dip in ratings, Schwarzenegger blamed Trump for tainting the show through his divisive presidential run, with the season debuting just before Trump took office in January 2017 and both viewers and sponsors were turned off by the show’s brand.
“Even if asked [to do it again] I would decline.” Schwarzenegger told Empire. “With Trump being involved in the show people have a bad taste and don’t want to participate as a spectator or as a sponsor or in any other way support the show. It’s a very divisive period now and I think this show got caught up in all that division.”
Arnold again shot back at Trump this week after the president’s dig that he was “dead,” taking to Twitter to remind Donald Trump that he was still very much alive and more than willing to go head-to-head when it comes to transparency.
“I’m still here. Want to compare tax returns,” Schwarzenegger tweeted in response.
.@realDonaldTrump at the “social media summit” on Thursday claimed that @Schwarzenegger is ‘dead’. Check how @Terminator star hits back at the US president https://t.co/6out4ol7g7
— News Nation (@NewsNationTV) July 12, 2019
Arnold Schwarzenegger has been a frequent critic of Donald Trump, with NBC News noting that the Terminator actor called the president a “little wet noodle” after his much-criticized joint press conference with Vladimir Putin last year, in which Trump supposedly sided with the Russian president over his own intelligence agencies on the issue of Russian election interference.
