Arnold Schwarzenegger says Trump is ‘failed leader’, calls for unity after Capitol siege



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“We need to heal, together, from the drama of what just happened,” Schwarzenegger said in a seven-and-a-half-minute video posted to Twitter. “We need to heal, not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans.”

Schwarzenegger drew inspiration from his childhood in Austria following World War II, warning of the threat posed by repeated lies and intolerance.

He compared Wednesday’s riot on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob in Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, the Nazi regime’s outburst of violence against Jewish communities, synagogues and businesses in Germany and Austria in 1938.

“Wednesday was the day of broken glass right here in the United States,” he said, referring to the shattered windows of the Capitol building. But the crowd also “shattered ideas we took for granted” and “trampled on the very principles on which our country was founded,” he said.

Schwarzenegger said he grew up in Austria around “broken men drinking in the guilt of participating in the most evil regime in history”. They were not all “rabid anti-Semites or Nazis,” he said. “Many just followed, step by step, down the road.”

He told the story of his own father, who was a member of the Nazi Party during World War II.

“I never shared this publicly because it’s a painful memory, but my dad would come home drunk once or twice a week, and he would scream and hit us and scare my mom,” Schwarzenegger said. .

Men like his father suffered both from “physical pain from the shrapnel in their bodies and emotional pain from what they saw or did.”

“Being from Europe, I saw with my own eyes how things can get out of hand,” he said.

“ Our democracy has held firm ”

The former governor and Republican actor then turned his attention to the president.

“President Trump has sought to overturn the results of an election, a fair election. He sought a coup by deceiving people with lies,” he said. “My father and our neighbors have also been misled by lies, and I know where those lies lead.”

“President Trump is a failed leader. He will go down in history as the worst president ever. The good thing is that he will soon be as irrelevant as an old tweet.”

Schwarzenegger also called elected officials who allowed the president. Without naming anyone, he said a number of his party members were “impertinent” and “accomplices” to those who carried out the insurgency.

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“But it didn’t work. Our democracy has stood firm,” he said, pointing to the certification of Biden’s electoral victory just hours after the capture of Capitol Hill. “What a great demonstration of democracy.”

In the video, Schwarzenegger picked up a sword, which he said belonged to Conan the Barbarian, the character he played in the 1982 film of the same name.

“Our democracy is like the steel of that sword,” he said. “The more it is tempered, the stronger it becomes.”

In order for the nation to begin to heal, Schwarzenegger called on everyone to join him in a message to Biden: “President-elect Biden, we wish you great success as president. If you are successful, our nation is successful. We are successful. support you with all our hearts as you seek to bring us together. ”

“And to those who think they can overturn the Constitution of the United States, know this,” he added. “You will never win.”

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