Arnold Schwarzeneggger isn't going to be the host of "Celebrity Apprentice" after his first season with the show, this much is clear. The star of the "The Terminator" movies is cited at length in an article from Saturday March 3rd at Empire Online where he claimed, "It's not about the show."

Schwarzenegger elaborated that "everyone (he) ran into came up to (him) and said 'I love the show... but I turned it off because as soon as I read Trump's name I'm outta there!" (qtd. by James Dyer). In short, the former A-list actor is attributing the show's poor ratings to the President of the United States, Donald Trump.

"NBC did everything they could to promote the show and [producer] Mark Burnett did a fantastic job," Schwarzenegger claimed. "No one really knew that this was going to happen and I think that everyone was caught off guard."

Burnett is certainly no failure when it comes to getting the ratings. His best-known TV program is "Survivor," a reality TV show that took the entertainment industry by storm during the summer of 2000. The long-'surviving' program has seen better days when it comes to ratings, however original episodes will still be aired later this month with "Survivor - Game Changers."

Trump brand hurting

Attributing the decline in ratings to Trump's involvement with the show certainly isn't contradicted by other news stories in recent months.

In early February numerous news sources, including "Independent," reported on Ivanka Trump's clothing line being dropped from Nordstrom. According to a Peter Walken article on February 3rd, the dropping of Ivanka's clothing line followed a "boycott campaign that (targeted) more than 60 companies associated with Trump family."

From this point of view, the dropped ratings with "Celebrity Apprentice" could be viewed in the context of the backlash against Donald Trump, the allegations against him, and his really-existing unpopularity despite winning the college-electoral vote, a system that doesn't require popular support among the American public.

As another case in point, Trump's hotels have been reported as suffering. Harriet Baskas, writing at NBCnews.com on October 20th of last year headlined "With Empty Rooms and Bookings Plummeting, Trump Hotels Are Taking a Beating." The reported declining TV ratings for "Celebrity Apprentice" could be viewed in the context of the Trump's family's other reported declining sales.

Trump says Schwarzenegger was fired

Trump claimed in a Saturday tweet that "bad (pathetic) ratings" fired Schwarzenegger. This would contradict the notion of the movie star quitting the show. In the end, only the fans of the series can answer as to whether they stopped watching out of contempt for Trump or because of lack of intrigue due to the host. But given what's happened at the hotels and with Ivanka's clothing interests, it could easily be the former.

Perhaps the only way to understand it all is that Schwarzenegger was fired due to bad ratings, that he doesn't really care about that, and that the bad ratings were due to Trump anyways. It may sound contradictory, but you don't always get fired for things that are your own fault.

Sometimes you are just in the wrong role at the wrong time.
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