Arnold
Schwarzenegger says Trump is a 'failed leader' and urges unity after Capitol
siege
By Dakin
Andone, CNN
(CNN)In a
call for unity following Wednesday's siege of the US Capitol, former California
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said President Donald Trump will be remembered as
the worst President in US history and urged Americans to offer their support to
President-elect Joe Biden.
"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."
Schwarzenegger
drew on his childhood in Austria in the wake of World War II, warning of the
threat posed by repeated lies and intolerance.
He
compared Wednesday's riot at the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob to
Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, the rampage of violence
by the Nazi regime 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 broken windows in the Capitol building. But the mob also
"shattered the ideas we took for granted" and "trampled the very
principles on which our country was founded," he said.
Schwarzenegger
said he grew up in Austria around "broken men drinking away the guilt over
their participation in the most evil regime in history." They weren't all
"rabid anti-Semites or Nazis," he said. "Many just went along,
step-by-step, down the road."
He 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 firsthand how things can spin out of control," he
said.
The
former Republican governor and actor then turned his attention to the
President.
"President
Trump sought to overturn the results of an election, of a fair election. He
sought a coup by misleading people with lies," he said. "My father
and our neighbors were misled also with lies, and I know where such lies
lead."
"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
also called out elected officials who enabled the President. Without naming
anyone, he said a number of members of his party had exhibited
"spinelessness" and were "complicit" with those who carried
out the insurrection.
"But
it did not work. Our democracy held firm," he said, pointing to the
certification of Biden's electoral victory just hours after the storming of the
Capitol. "What a great display of democracy."
In the
video, Schwarzenegger picked up a sword, one he said belonged to Conan the
Barbarian, the character he played in the 1982 film by the same name.
"Our
democracy is like the steel of this sword," he said. "The more it is
tempered, the stronger it becomes."
For the
nation to begin healing, Schwarzenegger called on everyone to join him in a
message to Biden: "President-elect Biden, we wish you great success as our
President. If you succeed, our nation succeeds. We support you with all our
hearts as you seek to bring us together."
"And
to those who think they can overturn the United States Constitution, know
this," he added. "You will never win."