Trump Used National Prayer Breakfast to Ask Us to Pray for Schwarzenegger’s Celebrity Apprentice Ratings

Pres. Trump jokes about Arnold Schwarzenegger as host of “Apprentice”: “I want to just pray for Arnold if we can for those ratings.” pic.twitter.com/hNy115htJr

— ABC News (@ABC) February 2, 2017

Donald Trump opened today’s National Prayer Breakfast in typical Trump fashion: by talking about ratings.

During the annual event’s customary Presidential speech, sure, he talked about his recent trip to see the family of the Navy Seal killed in the recent horrific, reportedly severely under-planned attack on Yemen, as well as the ban on Muslim immigration and how that is somehow going to defend our country’s “religious liberty.”

But before he spoke about any of this, he had to lead off with some words praising himself and his own successes on television. And because this is Donald Trump, he doesn’t know how to talk himself up without tearing someone else down. So naturally, he had to go after Arnold Schwarzenegger.

When I ran for president, I had to leave the show. That’s when I knew for sure that I was doing it. And they hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. And we know how that turned out.

The ratings went down the tubes. It’s been a total disaster and Mark will never, ever bet against Trump again. And I want to just pray for Arnold if we can, for those ratings, okay?

This isn’t the first time the self-proclaimed “ratings machine” has publicly mocked the new Celebrity Apprentice ratings. After the season premiere, the then-President-elect tweeted,

Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got “swamped” (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT. 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

Because remember, this is a man who sees everyone who didn’t support him as his “enemies,” rather than fellow Americans he’s sworn to serve.

Trump, of course, chose to ignore the fact that Celebrity Apprentice ratings had been falling for years. He also apparently chose to ignore anything resembling simple sensical storytelling. (In a story about his agent he fired after he advised Trump not to do Celebrity Apprentice, why would Mark [meaning Mark Burnett, the show’s producer who convinced him to do the show in the first place] “bet against” him?) But even ignoring those ham-fisted, superficial elements, dragging the ratings on a show he left on his own volition is not only grossly narcissistic, but it’s a despicable way to open the National Prayer Breakfast at a time when the country–and the world–feels so divided and so terrified.

At the very least, Schwarzenegger himself had a pretty stellar response.

Now, we can’t ignore that Schwarzenegger has his own long history of proud misogyny (one of our big issues with Trump, of his many, many, many issues), but I have to say, given a choice between those two, that offer to switch jobs isn’t sounding too terrible.

(image via screengrab)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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