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

With promotion like that it’s no wonder so many of Trump’s ventures fail

Whether Trump’s ventures fail depends on the measure of success. If you measure success as hours of attention spent on Trump, Trump, and nothing but Trump, they actually have been rather successful. His name is known in every household in America – and now, unfortunately, the world.

Donald Trump has been incredibly successful. At playing a businessman, on screen and off. And it’s not even that he’s playing a role. He’s playing a a game in which the only object is to promote Donald Trump all the time, every time. Except that it’s not even a real game – it’s one of those crappy freemium games where you pay for powerups, and Trump has used his inherited wealth to buy them all. And the tragedy of it all is that few people care, because apparently, that’s just the way things are done now.

Did Arnie support Hillary? I thought he was Republican, though to be honest that’s just an assumption based on the way he mocked ‘girly-man with skinny arms’ Obama a couple of years ago.

I’m surprised Trump has Arnie doing Apprentice (does he actually have businesses to employ the winner?). The job seemed tailor-made for one of the Trumplets. Not Ivanka, obviously, that would keep her away from Daddy for too long.

It’s interesting about this “success” thing. Yes, in one sense he has achieved a level of success that is quite staggering relative to his talents. On the other hand, one thing his “success” has done is made it blindingly obvious how very meager his talents are, and what a dishonest, malevolent, and stupid man he is. That’s on the record now and it will stay there. It’s very double-edged. He got the Big Job, but he trashed his reputation in the process.

Yes, and specifically, he has trashed his reputation among the very people whose approval he has so desperately sought.

Many people, and especially many Republicans, could honestly say that they would rather have the support and love of former steelworkers in the Rust Belt than all the journalists and other “coastal elites.” Trump is trying to pretend that this is the case with him, but it so transparently isn’t. One of the consistent themes you hear from everyone who’s dealt with him over the years, as well as from Trump’s own words on a few candid occasions, is how anxious he is to be embraced by Manhattan’s elite and no longer be Donnie from Queen’s.

Acolyte @10, I don’t know that Trump actually had any say in who the new host of Celebrity Apprentice would be. Depends what’s in his contract with Mark Burnett’s company. It would not shock me if all Trump gets is the executive producer credit and a share of the proceeds, and has no actual managerial input.

I think he does console himself with the adulation of “the people”…and kind of hug it to him to ward off the pain of the non-adulation of the coastal latte-wearing elites. I think he does love the attention and the cheering, just as everyone says. But yes also that it galls him that even minimal respect from the editors and art patrons is receding ever farther into the distance.

Screechy Monkey, I think most of them want the love of the coastal elites, too. I think their disdain and anger at so-called “coastal elites” comes from the fact that these individuals have not proven susceptible to their many “charms” and continue to question their motives. In the end, they do want these people to love them, but on their terms…you know, sort of Stockholm Syndrome terms.

Yeah, I was being generous to the other Republicans there. For all their talk, most of the famous conservatives went to the same elite schools and live in the same coastal enclaves that they pretend to disdain. They might show up in “flyover country” for a book signing or big speaking engagement, but culturally most of them are more like their liberal counterparts than the people they hold up as Real Americans.

I thought he was Republican, though to be honest that’s just an assumption based on the way he mocked ‘girly-man with skinny arms’ Obama a couple of years ago.

For goodness sake, he was he Republican Governor of California for eight years! Did you never hear of “the Governator”?

It’s just that he’s rational enough to know Trump is unfit for office:

For the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, Schwarzenegger endorsed fellow Republican John Kasich. However, he announced in October that he would not vote for the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the that year’s United States presidential election, with this being the first time he did not vote for the Republican candidate since becoming a citizen in 1983.