Arnold Schwarzenegger challenges Trump to 'compare tax returns' after 'Apprentice' snipe

You'd really think – hope, actually – that Donald Trump might have more important things to do than taunt Arnold Schwarzenegger over The Apprentice.

But the US president brought up once again how he was a ratings hit compared to the numbers pulled in by Schwarzenegger when he took over hosting the series.

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Speaking at the White House, he said: “MSNBC, they’re stone cold crazy. I made them a lot of money with The Apprentice, and I gave them a top show when they were dying on NBC.

“But they don’t like me too much. They wanted a big extension. They used Arnold Schwarzenegger instead. Big movie star. You know what? He died. He died.

“I was there 12 years, 14 seasons and then they pick a movie actor and he dies on us.”

Trump fronted The Apprentice from 2004 to February 2015, with NBC eventually cutting ties with the businessman and then president hopeful over the now infamous comments he made about immigrants, saying that Mexico was sending 'rapists' to the US.

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Trump later claimed he was planning to quit the show anyway.

But the Austrian Oak, and former Governor of California, has since chimed in that he's not, as Trump figuratively mentioned, dead.

In a tweet, the Terminator star wrote: “I’m still here. Want to compare tax returns.”

Trump, unlike every other US president since Richard Nixon, has refused to publish his tax returns, having long claimed that they're being audited by the IRS.

Extensive reporting in The New York Times in May this year showed that Trump lost over a billion dollars in business earnings from 1985 to 1994.

It's far from the first time that Arnie and Trump have locked horns.