Arnold Schwarzenegger shared doubts about Donald Trump’s self-reported weight with a brutal burn against both the former president and climate crisis deniers in his party.
Mr Trump’s weight made headlines in August when he was required to report it during his arrest for election interference charges in Georgia.
His booking forms stated that he is 6’3” with “blond or strawberry” hair and blue eyes - weighing 215 pounds. That number drew questions as it was noted that his weight was listed at 240 pounds just four months earlier when he was indicted on criminal charges in New York in April.
The confusion was perfect fodder for late-night TV - but never made it into any scripts at the time because talk shows were on hiatus due to the writer’s strike at the time.
Now with the strike resolved and shows back on, Jimmy Kimmel wasted no time in bringing up Mr Trump’s weight in his first episode back on Monday night.
Mr Kimmel asked guest Mr Schwarzenegger if he thought, given his bodybuilding expertise, that 215lbs was an accurate weight for the former president.
“As much as it’s possible that there is no climate change,” the former California governor and frequent Trump critic replied, sparking an eruption of laughter from the audience. “As much as it’s possible that we don’t really need to reduce pollution.”
Mr Trump has repeatedly set aside climate change as nothing more than a “hoax” and during his presidential term did everything he could to roll back mention of trying to reduce global warming.
A self-confessed climate denier, Mr Trump repealed or weakened at least 100 environmental regulations and pieces of climate legislation during his administration.
After calling out Mr Trump’s environmental record, Mr Schwarzenegger offered his own guess for the former president’s true weight.
“We all know the weight he is and it makes him feel good to tell everyone he weighs 215,” he said. “I think everyone laughs about it because he does not look like he weighs 215, he looks a little bit more like maybe 315.
“If he would ask me what should I do for fitness, I would say ‘run around yourself three times, then you’re gonna be in great shape’.”
Trump claims to have lost around 25 pounds in the past four months, due to the differences in records— (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
Mr Trump and Mr Schwarzenegger have a long-standing feud that dates back to sometime around 2016 when the latter urged fellow Republicans not to vote for the former in the upcoming election, telling them to “choose your country over your party.”
Since then the two have had a public back-and-forth on social media, often sending each other jabs over various political differences.
However, the two Republicans were not always trying to tear each other down. Back when Mr Schwarzenegger started a new career as the California governor in 2003, the two regarded each other as “great friends,” with Mr Trump even donating $10,000 to the governor’s re-election campaign.
The two remained friends even after Mr Schwarzenegger replaced Mr Trump as the host of The Celebrity Apprentice after Mr Trump announced his presidential election campaign.
Mr Kimmel said on his show that he was glad he was back on the air to talk about Mr Trump’s apparent 25-pound weight loss.
“Every time something happened in the news, I would get texts asking me if I was bummed we didn’t have a show that night,” Mr Kimmel told his audience. “Mostly, I was fine but the one that really got me was when they booked Trump in Georgia and he self-reported his weight at 215 pounds. I almost crossed the picket line for that.”
He then continued to say that Mr Trump could have lost all that weight by “frying his chicken in Ozempic”.
