As Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s online feud with the President of the United States rolls on, he recently sat down with Men’s Journal for a cover story about his new job as host of “Celebrity Apprentice” and how he first reacted when Donald Trump mocked his low ratings on Twitter.
“Wow, the ratings are in, and Arnold Schwarzenegger got ‘swamped’ (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT,” Trump tweeted two weeks before his inauguration. “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.”
Schwarzenegger told MJ that he wanted to consider carefully how he should respond to Trump, saying that one should never “get into a stinking contest with a skunk.” But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t tempted to go Commando on him.
“I called my assistant and said, ‘I think what we really should do is request a meeting and go back to New York…and then we just smash his face into the table,” he joked.
Instead, the man once known as the Governator decided to take a different approach, tweeting back at Trump that he hoped the new president would “work for ALL of the American people as aggressively as you worked for your ratings.”
“I think people really reacted well to that response,” he said. “I sound more presidential and more diplomatic and more elder-statesman — that’s exactly the way Donald should be.”
You can read Schwarzenegger’s full talk with Men’s Journal when their next issue hits newsstands March 3.