The day was supposed to be simple: a cheesy White House photo-op, a couple of turkeys, and some bad jokes about Thanksgiving. But nothing is simple with Donald Trump â not even a turkey pardon.
Standing in a freshly paved-over Rose Garden, Trump puffed himself up as commander-in-chief and pardoned two birds named âGobbleâ and âWaddleâ â âwhich is what Trump does every night at dinner,â as Jimmy Kimmel put it. It shouldâve been harmless.

It wasnât.
Because while Trump tried to turn a turkey ceremony into yet another self-congratulation tour â ranting about âending wars,â lying about low prices, and randomly insulting the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois as âincompetentâ and a âbig fat slobâ â the rest of the world was watching something else:
His credibility collapsing in real time.
On Air Force One, flying back to Florida to sulk at his taxpayer-funded resort, Trump was asked a basic question: Americans are terrified about losing their health care â will you at least extend Affordable Care Act subsidies?
Trumpâs answer was pure cruelty.
âIâd rather not extend them at all,â he said. He called Obamacare a âdisaster,â blamed Democrats, and babbled about some fantasy plan where you âjust give people the moneyâ and let them âbuy their own health careâ â revealing he doesnât even understand how insurance, risk pools, or catastrophic costs actually work.
While 20 million people worried about coverage, Trumpâs priority was⊠his image.
And thatâs where Arnold Schwarzenegger comes in.

Whatâs more terrifying than the Terminator hunting you down? Arnold and Jimmy Kimmel teaming up to roast you on national television â over and over again.
Their feud with Trump started over something as shallow as Trump himself: TV ratings. After Arnold took over as host of Celebrity Apprentice, Trump couldnât handle that someone else was sitting in his old chair. Instead of focusing on governing, he tweeted, bragging that Arnold was âdestroyedâ by the âratings machine, DJT.â
He even used the National Prayer Breakfast â an event about faith and unity â to attack Arnoldâs ratings and ask religious leaders to pray for his TV numbers.
Arnoldâs response was legendary.
âHey, Donald, I have a great idea,â he said in a video that went viral. âWhy donât we switch jobs? You take over TV since youâre such an expert in ratings, and Iâll take over your job â and then people can finally sleep comfortably again.â
From there, it only escalated.
As Trump embraced white nationalists in Charlottesville, called Nazis âvery fine people,â and tried to overturn a democratic election, Arnold dropped a series of brutal videos calling him out â sitting at a desk with a Trump bobblehead, reminding America there are not âtwo sidesâ to hate and bigotry, and urging people to support President-elect Joe Biden to protect democracy itself.
âThose who think they can overturn the Constitution,â Arnold said, âwill never win.â
While Trump ranted about gas being $2 a gallon (it wasnât), lied about murders in Washington, and mocked other peopleâs weight while pretending he was thin, Kimmel and Arnold systematically shredded his image as a âstrong leader.â
Kimmel mocked his fantasy economics.
Arnold mocked his fake toughness.
Then came one of Arnoldâs coldest lines:
âPresident Trump is a failed leader. He will go down in history as the worst president ever. The good thing is that he soon will be as irrelevant as an old tweet.â

Trump could never quite hit back at Arnold the way he wanted â because how do you out-macho the guy who is the Terminator? How do you outwork an immigrant who became the biggest action star on earth and governor of California? How do you win a truth fight when your opponent doesnât have a trail of bankrupt casinos, failed schemes, and collapsing memecoins behind him?
By March 2017, Arnold walked away from Celebrity Apprentice, saying viewers and sponsors didnât want to be associated with Trumpâs toxicity. Trump claimed he âfiredâ him over âbad ratings.â
Arnoldâs comeback?
âIâm still here. Want to compare tax returns?â
That one hit Trump in his most fragile spot â his money and his secrets.
Meanwhile, Trump kept spiraling: parroting Kremlin talking points about Ukraine, shrugging that Russia would probably take more land anyway, dismissing reports of pro-Putin âpeace plansâ as âstandard negotiation,â and proving again and again that he is better at surrendering American leverage than defending it.
In the end, Kimmel and Schwarzenegger didnât just âownâ Trump for laughs.
They exposed him.
They showed a man obsessed with ratings, revenge, and his own reflection â a man more interested in mocking governorsâ weight and lying about Thanksgiving prices than protecting democracy or making sure Americans can see a doctor.
Trump called himself a âratings machineâ and a âstable genius.â
Arnold and Kimmel showed the world what he really was:
A petty, insecure bully â rattled by a turkey ceremony, a talk show host, and a movie star who refused to be afraid of him.
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