Arnold Schwarzenegger confronts The View hosts on immigration, demanding legal compliance and community contribution while criticizing illegal acts as a "double whammy." This appearance allegedly counters internal ABC News pressures from Disney CEO Bob Iger, who faces advertiser struggles, FCC investigations into DEI, and a $16 million legal bill. Speculation suggests Schwarzenegger was recruited to salvage the network amid falling stock and YouTube competition, though his own past controversies remain relevant as he shifts blame for LA protests from politicians to Donald Trump. Ultimately, the segment highlights the volatile intersection of celebrity activism, corporate survival, and shifting media landscapes. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, Qwen/Qwen3-ForcedAligner-0.6B, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Arnold Saves The Show00:01:53
Arnold Schwarzenegger's stock just went up in my book because he achieved the impossible.
I mean, really and truly the impossible, guys.
You know how much those ladies on The View love to talk.
You know how much nonsense they like to spout.
Well, you know, they're kind of up against it because Bob Iger has been telling them, hey, hey, hey, hey, can you stop with the politics?
Maybe do a little entertainment.
Maybe do a little, I don't know, fashion or whatever stuff you ladies do.
Oh, but they still don't do.
Don't have them doing fashion.
That would be game over.
Anyway, they were like, no, no, we just want to do politics.
And so there's a standoff going on between the ABC News president, the producer of The View, Bob Iger, and the talent on the show.
So perhaps Bob was like, hey, let me call Arnold in.
Maybe Arnold can help talk some sense into them.
I don't know.
I mean, I don't think there's a lot of sense that could be even talked into Iger, shall we say.
That's a whole other can of worms with Disney.
Just look at the stock price.
It tells you everything you need to know.
But this show in particular is now facing new struggles.
Its ratings are okay.
remarkably.
You know, it's not suffering from quite the MSNBC problem, but it's not actually doing so well, one, with advertisers or two, with the FCC.
Don't forget, Brandon Carr is all over these guys over at ABC because of, well, look, a lot of the falseness that was put forward over the last however many years, as well as the DEI stuff.
So ABC's in trouble.
They've got to do something.
They brought on Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I just got to say, you know, I'm going to hand it to arnie, right?
Because he shut them up.
This is unbelievable.
You have to see this, okay?
If there's one clip you got to see, it is this one Arnold Schwarzenegger causing Joy Behar to just like have her mouth on the floor.
Let's watch it together.
Pride In Being American00:05:31
So, if you are an immigrant, you're an immigrant in this country.
Did you have a visceral reaction to what they're doing, what ICE is doing when you see the videos of it?
Well, I tell you, you said that the immigrant, I'm so proud and happy that.
I was embraced by the American people like that.
I mean, imagine I came over here with the age of 21, with absolutely nothing.
And then to create a career like that.
I mean, in no other country in the world could you do that.
Every single thing, if it's my bodybuilding career, if it's my acting career, becoming governor, the beautiful family that I've created, all of this is because of America.
That's true.
And so this is why I'm so, so happy to see firsthand.
That this is the greatest country in the world and it is the land of opportunity.
And I think because I'm such a proud American and a proud immigrant that came to America, I was asked to do on July 4th a big speech, the keynote speech at Mount Vernon.
Oh.
That George Washington was made to rest.
I just want to say, wait for it, okay?
Because I know you guys are like, wait, trust me, trust me, it gets really good.
will become citizens that day.
That's great.
So it's really a great, great celebration.
This is what this is all about, is to celebrate people becoming Americans and coming to America and all that.
And so I just think the world of the great kind of history that we have with immigrants in America.
But the key thing also is at the same time that we've got to do things legal.
That is the important thing.
So you've got to do things legal.
And those people that are doing illegal things in America and that are foreigners, They are not smart because when you come to America, you're a guest and you have to behave like a guest.
Like when I go to someone's house and I'm a guest, then I will do everything I can, keep things clean and to make my bed and to do everything that is the right thing to do rather than committing a crime or being abusive or something like that.
So that doesn't really work in this country.
So I think the important thing is when you become an immigrant, to think about, okay, I go to America because I want to use America for the great opportunities that America has in education, in jobs, creating a family, all of those kind of things.
Then you have to think about, okay, if I get all of those things from America, then I have to give something back.
You have a responsibility as an immigrant to give back to America and to pay back to America and to go and do something for your community for no money whatsoever.
Give something back to after-school programs.
Special Olympics or whatever it is, make this country a better place.
Wow.
Right?
I mean, they didn't have much to say.
I don't know if they were expecting that.
And granted, he had kind of a nicer sort of ribbon on all of it, give back, et cetera.
But I think the overall message was, you know what?
If you're in this country, be thankful.
Recognize how great it is to be part of this wonderful country.
Remember when we were in school?
I remember being in the fourth grade, and my social studies teacher taught me about the salad versus, oh, wow.
Okay, I'm having a Biden moment.
It's like the salad versus the soup, basically, like one is all mixed in together, and the salad is all kind of lumpy and choppy.
And there's two ways to think about society.
And part of the beauty, right, of coming to America is y'all lump in together and y'all become one.
And so you don't have, say, little Haiti where Kathy Hochul was proudly touring today and then saying, oh gosh, everybody's upset.
You don't have all these divisive divisions and neighborhoods where people only speak their language.
You actually all become one because you're American.
I used to say to my mom when I was a kid, because, you know, we've been here many generations now from Ireland.
My family originally came over during the famine on my mom's side and under different circumstances on my dad's side.
But I remember saying as a kid, for the Olympics, mom, who do we root for, Ireland or America?
And she was like, of course, America.
Because you're American before you're anything else.
And that's what's truly great and special about this nation.
So we don't need people at the Dodgers Stadium singing the national anthem in Spanish, for goodness sakes.
No, we have one language.
It's English, okay?
And we need to have pride in that.
Take pride in it.
Take pride in being American first before anything else.
We're all from somewhere, okay?
And we all have different ethnic backgrounds and it's tremendous and it's great and that's what makes us special, the ability to pull from here, there and everywhere to create something that is so uniquely American.
Kimmel And Political Trouble00:08:42
Arnold Schwarzenegger gets that.
I don't think any of the ladies on the view do.
But let's remember that.
Let's focus on that.
In terms of people that are here illegally, look, you're here illegally and you committed a crime.
I mean, that's a double whammy.
I don't know what Kathy Holkle expects.
I mean, I guess she expects that we're going to still roll out a red carpet for them.
How?
Why?
You know, look, Arnold's, I don't know what Arnold's up to.
Is he promoting a movie or something that I'm not aware of?
That would be just like me, right?
Um, because i'm not really into pop culture, but I know who he is and he was the former governor of California.
I know that during march 2020, he said some things that a lot of people really didn't like, and I know that he's had some uh, rather uh significant indiscretions in his personal life.
We'll leave it there, but he is, for whatever reason, getting out in front of this issue in a big way.
Interestingly enough, it seems to be on a lot of ABC properties, which has me wondering, did Bob make a call?
Here he is on Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Kimmel, who was actually Kind of facing some heat for some things he said about California.
Jimmy Kimmel doesn't like that the feds are coming in, nationalizing the National Guard.
He didn't like that one single bit.
And he said some things and people were kind of angry.
I actually heard from a lot of you guys saying, what the heck is Jimmy Kimmel doing on his show?
Well, the next thing you know, he had Arnold in the seat.
And it's like he didn't even know what to make of his guest.
We did this in the shorts feed.
I'll show you.
Interestingly, Arnold Schwarzenegger does not blame Donald Trump for the protests out in L.A. that Jimmy.
Kimmel doesn't seem to think even exists.
Anyway, Jimmy, you might want to be careful who you have on your show.
If the politicians would do the work, think about it.
What do you mean by that exactly?
What do you mean by that?
Almost four decades, we have had a problem where they talked about immigration reform, comprehensive immigration reform.
But the Democrats and the Republicans, both of the parties, have no interest in solving this problem because they use that to raise money.
And so what they do is they just keep pointing the finger at each other, and then they're surprised if all of a sudden we are using our middle finger on them, right?
But I mean, it's all bogus because I think that we can do better than that.
Democrats and Republicans, and you know, when they talk about Democrats and Republicans, even though I'm a Republican, I tell you, it is sometimes disappointing.
And I think even just when you look at the symbols of the party, think about that.
I mean, the Democrats, donkey, Republicans, elephant.
And a donkey is a jackass.
And of course, wherever the big animal goes, lives a pile of dump.
And the moniker, kind of fits.
No, I meant for.
The Donkeys, that is anyway.
You see what i'm saying.
They've got Arnold Schwarzenegger out there making the rounds on ABC all of a sudden, which has me wondering, you know, is it because of the big fight with the FCC?
We've talked a lot about this.
You see Bob Igor's in all kinds of trouble with the FCC and the FCC is doing this investigation into DEI.
They also are basically looking at possibly taking away the ABC affiliations at hundreds of affiliates, ABC affiliates all over the country, because the FCC governs those airwaves.
And Brendan Carr has already said in a letter to Iger back in December, before they were even in the seat Hey, guess what?
Americans don't trust you guys.
And guess what?
That $16 million legal bill you had to foot, thanks to Georgie Poo Stephanopoulos on his Sunday show, your chief political anchor, for goodness sakes, making all kinds of libelous claims about the president.
That's more proof that you know what?
You're spinning a bunch of lies.
And because of that, we may have to take action.
On top of that, you had, of course, the DEI, the investigation that's still going on.
And Iger's in a little bit of trouble because even he was caught saying some things that maybe he shouldn't have been saying.
In fact, he tries to pin it, interestingly enough, on the other Bob, Bob Chapeauk, if I said his name right, who really drove the stock down.
People were kind of hoping Iger could salvage the situation, but I'm not so sure.
This newly discovered tape has him praising DEI to the point where it makes you kind of wonder, is this conflict with the FCC and the investigation that's ongoing right now motivating his reasons for putting Arnold on The View and on Jimmy Kimmel?
I don't know.
I mean, Bob has talked about this eloquently since he's become CEO.
I'll say a couple of things about it.
You know, we've tended to shy away from politics.
And in doing so, I think we've shied away from talking about issues that aren't political at all, like the issues that we're talking about today.
Because we believe in doing so, maybe it looks like we're taking a stand.
Well, in reality, we should be taking a stand.
By the way, I take responsibility for this.
I was CEO for 15 years.
And so I manage the company's public-facing processes and how we were portraying ourselves.
And I think that we have to be less cautious, as Bob, I think, was just alluding to, about such things and not be concerned.
Like just commenting about what happened in Washington last week, that's not political on our part at all.
We know that what we saw was fundamentally wrong.
and that it was rooted in hatred and disrespect and contempt and intolerance.
And we should feel free as a company to comment about that without retribution.
Another thing I want to say that I've learned these last nine to 12 months is, you know, I'm very proud of a lot of the work we've done in terms of diversity and inclusion on screen.
When we did, for instance, at Pixar, a great example of that, or Tiana, or of course Black Panther is one of the great examples of that.
I allowed those things to make me feel a bit complacent in a sense.
It's not that I wanted to be that way, but I thought, wow, we did Black Panther.
How great are we?
And it caused me to not focus as much as I should have on the culture of the company and the environment and in the voices that were telling those stories as opposed to just how they were being portrayed on the screen.
Wow.
All right.
So, Bobby Iger. might have some challenges with that particular soundbite because it seems a tad bit incriminating in that guess who is going back in time?
Is he not?
Yes, that is the latest who have just come out.
You see, they're going back in time to take a look, to take a look at everything that went down over the last several years.
And so he's not off the hook, so to speak, if things are improving in the here and now.
And this is in part perhaps why he's bringing the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger out there to help do what needs to be done as they try to salvage this network.
And so, yes, you suddenly have the view host getting all these warnings from Iger, et cetera.
Will it make any difference?
I don't know.
I mean, I don't know as you can really change things unless you actually change the cast there on the show, which is why Whoopi and some of the others might actually find themselves on the line in terms of their jobs themselves.
The show itself is likely on the line.
And so maybe they're looking at Arnold as some kind of savior.
Maybe he can join.
Maybe he can join the ladies and talk some sense into them every now and then.
But look, you have, again, only to look at the stock price and see how troubled this company is.
I will make this point that, you know, it would probably be better for them if they sold ABC.
I know that Bob doesn't want to do it.
He doesn't have an offer on the table that looks attractive enough.
People are not valuing these news organizations or these entertainment organizations the way they were once.
Why?
Oh.
because there's a whole new kid in town and it's called YouTube right here, right?