In The Know

Schwarzenegger advises Trump on weight loss: ‘Run around yourself three times’

Correction: An earlier version of this story misquoted Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comments on Monday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Arnold Schwarzenegger has some exercise advice for former President Trump: Do some laps “around yourself.”

“If he would ask me what should you do for fitness, I would just say, ‘Run around yourself three times. You’re going to be in great shape,’” Schwarzenegger quipped during a Monday appearance on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

The dig from California’s former GOP governor came after Kimmel asked Schwarzenegger about the 45th president’s recent arrest records. When he turned himself in at Georgia’s Fulton County Jail in August over charges related to the 2020 election, Trump’s weight was recorded at 215 pounds.

“Do you think it is possible that he weighs 215 pounds?” Kimmel asked the former bodybuilder, who served on the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports in the 1990s.

“Yeah, as much as it is possible that there is no climate change. As much as is possible that we don’t need to really reduce pollution,” Schwarzenegger said to laughs from the audience.

Kimmel noted that Schwarzenegger no longer “[seemed] like a Republican” due to his longtime activism to fight climate change and his views on other hot-button issues.

“I’m a proud Republican. And I’ll tell you why: Because I’m a traditional Republican,” said Schwarzenegger, the Golden State’s governor from 2003-11.

“Remember that the one that put most of the land aside for future generations was Teddy Roosevelt, who was a Republican. Ronald Reagan created the Air Resources Board in California, the most important board in order to really be able to execute all the laws that we passed. President Nixon created the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, in Washington,” the “Be Useful” author said.

“These were people that was sane Republicans, and that really were thinking more about what was good for the people, rather than being stuck in the ideological corners and they just can’t get along — which is totally ridiculous because as we all know, especially since I learned a lot of my lessons from sports — that you cannot win as win as a team if you don’t work together,” Schwarzenegger, 76, added.

But the traditional Republican Party, Kimmel responded, “doesn’t exist anymore.”

“But we have to inspire that,” replied the Austrian-born “Terminator” star, a frequent critic of Trump.

“It doesn’t mean that we should run the other way or we should give up. There’s moments in life where it needs leadership and where you have to encourage people to work together,” Schwarzenegger said.

Saying he sometimes touches down in Washington to lobby both Democrats and Republicans to fund after-school programs, Schwarzenegger exclaimed, “I think what we need is really leadership to bring people together and to teach both parties not to look at the other side as the enemy.”

“We are all on the same side of the fence. We are Americans, and we have to come together.”

Updated at 1:13 p.m. ET

Tags Arnold Schwarzenegger Teddy Roosevelt

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