Rob Schneider Shares Donald Trump Stories: From Tonight Show Jokes to Miss Universe Judging and Why Trump Loves America

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Rob Schneider Shares Donald Trump Stories: From Tonight Show Jokes to Miss Universe Judging and Why Trump Loves America

Rob Schneider recounts his encounters with Donald Trump, from an awkward joke on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that didn't land well to judging the Miss Universe pageant. Schneider defends Trump's love for America and discusses the 2020 election controversies, Hollywood's reaction to stock market volatility, and why Disney's woke agenda is failing. He also reflects on making comedy in an era of oversensitivity and shares insights from John Cleese about who should decide what's acceptable entertainment.

April 26, 2025

The Tonight Show Incident with Donald Trump and Jay Leno

Rob Schneider recalls appearing on The Tonight Show with both Donald Trump and Jay Leno. Before the show, Leno approached Schneider in his dressing room asking if he had any Trump jokes. Despite Schneider's hesitation, knowing the joke would be offensive, Leno pressured him to tell it on air. With 45 seconds on the clock, Leno set him up by asking what Schneider had mentioned backstage about Trump.

The joke? "The difference between me and Donald Trump is, when I got started, my daddy didn't give me $40 million." President Trump's reaction was immediate and unequivocal: "That's not true. That's not true. You're a liar. You're lying. That's not true." Schneider apologized, explaining that he was put on the spot and would "go for a laugh." The joke didn't even get a good laugh, making the awkward moment even worse.

Judging Miss Universe and Trump's Patriotism

Schneider later encountered Trump while judging the Miss USA pageant, which Trump owned at the time. Going through a personal rough patch after a romantic split, Schneider's publicist convinced him to attend. He found himself backstage when Trump appeared, and this is where Schneider's perspective on Trump crystallized.

"Donald Trump loves America more than any president in my lifetime," Schneider declares. He points to Trump's desire for Miss USA to win Miss Universe as evidence of this patriotism. Trump told the judges to vote for Miss Texas because "she's got the biggest chance," but the judges voted against Trump's preference for a brunette contestant who was close to completing medical school and needed the prize money for her final year.

When Schneider later reminded Trump about their Tonight Show encounter, Trump's response was characteristically blunt: "I hate you. No, seriously. I hate you now. I hate you." Despite this exchange, Schneider says Trump has been very nice to him and knows he's a supporter.

The 2020 Election and Missing Votes

Schneider doesn't hold back on election fraud claims: "If you wouldn't have cheated in 2020, and yes, you did cheat. It was 11 million votes." He references the question many Republicans asked during the Kamala Harris campaign: "What happened to those 11 million votes we had last time?" Schneider believes Democrats made a strategic error by not dealing with Trump earlier, suggesting "God works in mysterious ways and God works with people that you would never, you know, you wouldn't. God has his reasons for picking people and God has reasons why he wants Donald Trump to be president."

Hollywood's Stock Market Panic

Schneider reveals an interesting pattern: he didn't hear from Hollywood agents and managers until the stock market took a significant downturn. "I gotta tell you, I haven't had agents from Hollywood and managers call me until the stock market took a dump," he explains. They would ask, "Hey, what's your boy doing?" as if Schneider had direct access to influence Trump's tariff policies.

When the stock market had one of its biggest days in history, those calls stopped. Schneider points out that "the stock market is 70% owned by Democrats," so he feels "no pain at all for the Democrats." He criticizes them for not caring about the flyover states, arguing that Trump does care and that "this is his one chance to gain parity with other nations." No other president, Schneider argues, would push people with power in this country into "the pain category."

The Miss Teen USA Pageant Regret

In a particularly poignant story, Schneider shares a moment that still haunts him. While judging the Miss Teen USA pageant, he hesitated when scoring a contestant's final speech. He intended to give her an 8.5 but accidentally registered an 8.0. The contestant had given an "eloquent, beautiful speech," and that half-point difference cost her the crown.

During the commercial break, Schneider frantically tried to correct the mistake: "I gave her another half a point, like, please, someone help me." The response was cold: "It's too late. That's your fault. That's not on us." The next day at the airport, the girl's mother confronted him: "How dare you? She has been the most outspoken, eloquent." Schneider admits the mother was absolutely right.

The winner was a girl named Charlotte who had been an orphan and gone through the foster care system her entire life. While Schneider notes this was "a pretty great story," he mentions that Charlotte's path afterward wasn't easy, suggesting she may have done adult films. The moral weight of that decision still clearly affects him.

Deuce Biglow and Comedy in the Age of Sensitivity

Schneider addresses his famous role in Deuce Biglow, clarifying that he wasn't playing a gigolo but "a guy who cleaned fish tanks." This reflected his self-image: "I knew that I was never gonna get like the beautiful, gorgeous girls that I had crushes on in high school. I said, I just, I need something more than just being a, you know me. I need to be like a comedian."

The inspiration came from inverting American Gigolo with Richard Gere. Instead of beautiful women hiring a handsome gigolo, Schneider asked: "Who are the women that really need, maybe perhaps Gigolos?" His answer: women with narcolepsy, one leg, or Tourette syndrome. Amy Poehler played the latter, memorably.

"Disney made Deuce Biglow, they made The Hot Chick. They'll never do that again," Schneider laments. "Which is sad because you gotta have funny movies." He invokes his "good dear friend John Cleese from Monty Python," quoting him: "The most sensitive people should not be the ones deciding what everybody else gets to listen to and enjoy."

Disney's Woke Failure

Schneider pulls no punches about Disney's current direction: "It's not just sanitized. It's also woke and they're also shoving it down our throat and, thankfully, no one's taking it." He points to capitalism as the corrective force: "You're not gonna shove woke garbage down our throats."

The Snow White debacle serves as his prime example. "They released Snow White in March, which is the biggest that that March is like for movies that are turds. It is not a movie. You wanna release a movie in May when kids are starting, you wanna get ahead of the summer, or you wanna release it July 4th or at Christmas time."

Having worked at Disney, Schneider knows "for a fact that you never release a blockbuster in March. You just don't, nobody does it. It is a turd. And they knew it was a turd and they knew that girl had ruined the movie." He suggests there needs to be awareness for movie stars about how their public statements can damage their films, contrasting thoughtful discretion with "blowhard actors" whose "farts are rose scented" and who treat "every social media post" as "a thing of intellectual perfection."

The Lesson from Oprah

Schneider closes with wisdom passed to his friend Chaz Edelstein from Oprah years ago, though the transcript cuts off before completing the thought. The clear implication throughout: we need to return to being adults who decide for ourselves what to watch and enjoy, rather than letting a "small group of migrants" and "Disney executives" force "a very sanitized, very narrow agenda" on everyone.

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