Arnold Schwarzenegger on Sunday morning released a deeply personal video in which he compared the violent riot that took place on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C to the rise of Nazi Germany.
The movie star and former governor of California noted in the lengthy video message that he was born in Austria two years after the end of Word War II, but his family faced the repercussions from his father, who served as a Nazi. Schwarzenegger said he grew up among the impact of Kristallnacht, which he described as “a night of rampage against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys.”
“Wednesday was the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States,” Schwarzenegger said. “But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. They shattered the ideas we took for granted… [and] trampled the very principles on which our country was founded.”
Schwarzenegger then blasted Donald Trump and also warned Americans must be “aware of the dire consequences of selfishness and cynicism.”
“[Trump] sought a coup by misleading people with lies,” Schwarzenegger said. “President Trump is a failed leader. He will go down in history as the worst president ever. The good thing is he will soon be as irrelevant as an old tweet.”
Schwarzenegger criticized those in the Republican party, his party, who played into Trump’s lies and some who even helped perpetuate them in the lead up to the riot, quoting President Theodore Roosevelt: “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.”
In the conclusion of the video, Schwarzenegger congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on his free and fair election victory and wished him all the best.
As of 12:30 p.m., the video had more than 15 million views.
12:30 p.m.: Updated that the video had gone viral.
My message to my fellow Americans and friends around the world following this week's attack on the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/blOy35LWJ5
— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) January 10, 2021
