Arnold Schwarzenegger, former California Governor and actor, called Donald Trump a failed leader and said he took solace that Trump’s presidency was coming to an end and “would soon be irrelevant as an old tweet.”
The 73-year-old actor called for national unity and vowed his support for the President elect Joe Biden after Trump followers broke into the US capitol, causing a temporary suspension of the electoral count. However, member of Congress later returned and certified the results. The incident claimed the lives of five people, including a Capitol police officer.
Comparing the US Capitol riots to the Nazis, Arnold Schwarzenegger said Donald Trump “will go down in the history as the worst president ever.”
"We need to heal, together, from the drama of what has just happened," Schwarzenegger said in a seven and a half minute video posted on Twitter.
"We need to heal, not as Republicans or as Democrats, but as Americans," he said.
Shading Trump followers, he said, “And to those who think they can overturn the United States Constitution, know this: You will never win.”
Arnold recalled his childhood in Austria in the wake of World War II, warning of the threat posed by repeated lies and intolerance.
“Wednesday was the Night of Broken Glass right here in the United States.” In 1938, Nazis in Germany and Austria vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses during an attack that became known as Kristallnacht or “the Night of Broken Glass,” Arnold said.
“The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol, they shattered the ideas we took for granted,” he said, adding, “They trampled the very principles on which our country was founded.”
“I believe, as shaken as we are about the events of recent days, we will come out stronger because we now understand what can be lost,” he said.
He also shared a story of his own father, who was a member of the Nazi Party during World War II.
"I've never shared this publicly because it is a painful memory, but my father would come home drunk once or twice a week, and he would scream and hit us and scare my mother," Schwarzenegger said.
Men like his father were in both "physical pain from the shrapnel in their bodies and in emotional pain from what they saw or did."
"Being from Europe, I've seen first-hand how things can spin out of control," he said.
