Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday he will not be back for another season of NBC\u2019s reality show The Celebrity Apprentice, blaming U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s ongoing role as executive producer for low ratings. Action movie star Schwarzenegger took over as host of Celebrity Apprentice last year. His first season, which premiered in January, has been watched by around 4 million to 5 million viewers. \u201cEveryone, 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\u2019t have this baggage,\u201d Schwarzenegger said in a statement. No comment from Trump NBC, a unit of Comcast Corp., did not comment on Schwarzenegger\u2019s decision not to return for another season, or the show\u2019s future. There was no immediate comment from Trump or the White House Friday. Schwarzenegger, a Republican who served two terms as California governor but said he did not vote for Trump as president, told British film magazine Empire in an interview published Friday that he was leaving the show because of Trump\u2019s involvement. News that Trump will retain an executive producer credit on the show, which usually involves a payment, caused a media furor in December about potential conflicts of interest. Schwarzenegger told Empire that the show was \u201ca really great opportunity, but under the circumstances I don\u2019t want to do it again.\u201d Celebrity Twitter war \u201cWhen people found out that Trump was still involved as executive producer and was still receiving money from the show, then half the people (started) boycotting it,\u201d Schwarzenegger said. New York businessman Trump, who took office in January after winning November\u2019s presidential election, became a household name as the host of The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice for 14 seasons, where contestants would compete in business challenges. Trump mocked Schwarzenegger and the 43 percent drop in the coveted 18-to-49-year-old audience for the show\u2019s January premiere, sparking a Twitter fight between America\u2019s two biggest celebrities-turned-politicians. \u201cWow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got \u2018swamped\u2019 (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT,\u201d tweeted Trump. \u201cI wish you the best of luck and I hope you\u2019ll work for ALL of the American people as aggressively as you worked for your ratings,\u201d Schwarzenegger tweeted back. Some 20 million Americans watched the first year of The Apprentice, but viewership dropped to around 6 million in 2015 for Trump\u2019s final episode of The Celebrity Apprentice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday he will not be back for another season of NBC\u2019s reality show The Celebrity Apprentice, blaming U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s ongoing role as executive producer for low ratings. Action movie star Schwarzenegger took over as host of Celebrity Apprentice last year. His first season, which premiered in January, has been watched […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29716,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29715"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}