Tom Arnold's Ex-Wife Calls Cops After He Replaces Her Face in Photo with Trump's, Threatens To Withhold Kids: Report
Tom Arnold has become so preoccupied with Donald Trump that it’s taken over all aspects of his life — including, it seems, his increasingly toxic relationship with his ex-wife.
According to a restraining order filed by Ashley Groussman, who split from the actor last year after 10 years of marriage, Arnold has threatened to withhold their children after his assigned custody time was finished.
In another weird twist, Arnold allegedly covered his ex-wife’s face in a family photograph with the face of President Donald Trump.
This is perhaps the ultimate insult from the artist formerly known as Roseanne Barr’s other half, who was most recently seen hosting the canceled Viceland show “The Hunt for the Trump Tapes.” (Sorry for the spoilers, but he didn’t find them.)
Documents filed in Los Angeles County Court and obtained by The Blast say that on Jan. 3, Arnold “claimed to have absconded with the children during my custodial time, then refused to drop them off per our agreement until I involved the police. Following the police assisted exchange, (Tom) sent harassing text to me and my sister.”
He refused to turn the children over to their mother, according to the filing, and then forced her to pick them up at his house; she told him she was “not comfortable” showing up at his house and “reminded him that our agreement is for drop off at the receiving parent’s home at the end of each parent’s custodial period.”
Arnold, Groussman says, “refused to drop off the children, and instead insisted that I pick them up or else he would keep them for the weekend. I responded again that he did not bring the children to me by 2:00 pm or I would call the police.”
He didn’t, so guess what happened next? After police resolved the situation, Groussman claims that Arnold sent “rambling, unhinged, incoherent, and harassing series of texts to my sister.”
The weirdness didn’t stop there, with Arnold posting some of the text exchanges to Twitter. Apparently to prove he was the better parent, he paradoxically uploaded a video of his son to Facebook with him describing what it was like to be followed by police.
“The mother of my kids makes up stories & stages reckless, foolish & dangerous stunts, some with her family. Some at my home. Some at where she and sister Andrea live next to her parents Joyce & Stephen,” the description on the video read.
“Brother Mark Groussman just bought a huge new house on the block. The kids told me. who know? I know his sister Ashley’s fake stunts involve the police. She did one in front of each of our children’s schools over the last 2 weeks trying to get me arrested in front of our kids again. I’m going to court next week to try to get custody finally. That explains her escalating maybe. Until then Jax [Arnold’s son] is my wingman.”
Those posts have since been removed, presumably after paid legal professionals prevailed upon Arnold to stop punching himself in the face, and his social media feed is back to being filled with his thoughts on the president, such as this well-reasoned tweet right here:
If “$80 million for the head of President Trump” is a Mark Burnett Production he’s a genius. Bet Trump he’s getting a weekly EP fee & 10 points of syndication. His head is insured like a hole in one’s at golf tourneys so the show wouldn’t be liable if a contestant is successful. https://t.co/23EZeIgYEi
— Tom Arnold (@TomArnold) January 7, 2020
Well said, whatever that was supposed to say.
Most bizarre, however, is Groussman’s contention that Arnold taped “a photo of Donald Trump over my head on photograph of me holding our daughter, Quinn, and prominently [displays] it at the house.”
It’s just an allegation, but it would hardly seem surprising given one look at Arnold’s Twitter account: It seems to be nine-tenths talk about Trump with videos of his kids, his musings about sports and a retweet about Oreos (sure, why not?) crammed in the remaining 10 percent. There was, tellingly, little talk about his career.
This seems, at least for someone in Arnold’s position, to be exactly the opposite of what the ratio ought to be. It’s also why this peculiar allegation about the altered family photograph is entirely believable.
Arnold had a strange 2019 on both the political and familial fronts.
In August, according to the Daily Mail, Groussman called the police on Arnold after she said Jax was “crying hysterically and was inconsolable” because he couldn’t find Arnold or his sister, Quinn.
At the time, she filed for a restraining order, saying she was “extremely concerned for our children’s well-being and their states of mind” and that Arnold had been “behaving so erratically.”
The restraining order was denied, and Arnold said he had left Jax alone for 10 minutes while he “stopped to look at the moon together” with his daughter.
In October, after Trump tweeted about the crowd gathered in Dallas for one of his campaign rallies, Arnold responded, “Don’t get too cocky traitor. They showed up for JFK too.”
When a gun-carrying man was arrested by Dallas police near the rally and a Twitter user jokingly asked if it were Arnold, this was the actor’s entirely rational response:
I don’t own a gun. I’m a real man. I will wrestle the traitor at his next rally if he’s willing. He’s in the WWE Hall Of Fame. For what? Extortion? Cowardice? Definitely not being a patriot. You support Donald Trump now. You are UnAmerican too.
— Tom Arnold (@TomArnold) October 18, 2019
To be fair, this court filing is one side of the story. Arnold says his ex-wife “has a temper. She exhibits aggressive behavior on a regular basis.” He also says she’s called the police on him several times and that authorities have never found anything untoward.
Also, one should always be cautious about stories that seem to perfectly confirm one’s pre-existing biases about anything.
That said, the fact that these pre-existing biases exist at all is because Arnold has become consumed by his animus toward our 45th president. It’s not just the hate but the intensity of it, which seems to have blotted out everything enjoyable about life. Even his last project — the aforementioned “The Hunt for the Trump Tapes” — was nothing more than an outlet for the more outré aspects of his political beliefs.
Did Tom Arnold tape a picture of Trump over his ex-wife’s face on family pictures prominently displayed in his house?
I’ll say this much: Of all the aspects of Groussman’s complaint, I found that one to be the most unsurprising.
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