(AFP) – Arnold Schwarzenegger, the “Terminator” star and former Republican governor of California, endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Wednesday, saying she was the only person to “turn the page” on Donald Trump’s divisiveness. The former bodybuilder, 77, said while he had issues with both major parties, Trump’s rhetoric calling the United States “a trash can for the world” had made him “furious.”
With just days until the November 5 election, Schwarzenegger becomes the latest of dozens of prominent former Republicans — including former vice president Dick Cheney — to endorse the Democratic candidate for president over Trump. “To someone like me who talks to people all over the world and still knows America is the shining city on a hill, calling America… a trash can for the world is so unpatriotic, it makes me furious,” said the actor.
“I will always be an American before I am a Republican. That’s why, this week, I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” he wrote on X. Since leaving office in 2011 after two terms as the governor of the most populous US state, Schwarzenegger has championed environmental issues, small businesses, and immigration reform.
After the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, Schwarzenegger likened the attack to the Nazi Kristallnacht riots in his native Austria, and called the Republican a “failed leader” who “will go down in history as the worst president ever.” On Wednesday, he said he doesn’t “like either party right now.”
“My Republicans have forgotten the beauty of the free market, driven up deficits, and rejected election results,” he said. “Democrats aren’t any better at dealing with deficits, and I worry about their local policies hurting our cities with increased crime.” However, a vote for Trump would “just be four more years of bullshit with no results that makes us angrier and angrier, more divided, and more hateful,” he said. “Vote this week,” he implored. “Turn the page and put this junk behind us.”
– From Clooney to Aldrin –
The former actor wasn’t the only star lending his support to Harris this week. Hollywood megastars George Clooney and Julia Roberts have both voiced commercials in support of the Democrat. “Pretty Woman” actress Roberts’s ad features a woman whose apparently Trump-supporting husband asks if she made the “right choice” when she leaves the voting booth. “Sure did, honey,” she replies.
Clooney’s ad follows a group of men who appear to be ready to vote for Trump, but one of them has a change of heart when he sees his daughter, and votes instead for Harris. Both ads — sponsored by a progressive Christian group hoping to show members of their community that their vote is their own choice — feature the tagline: “What happens in the booth, stays in the booth.”
While Clooney, who played an astronaut in 2013’s “Gravity,” might be backing Harris, legendary space explorer Buzz Aldrin on Wednesday backed Trump. “The presidency requires an understanding of human nature, clarity in judgment, decisiveness, knowledge, understanding, and calm under pressures few have a natural ability to manage, or the life experience to successfully undertake,” he wrote. “I believe the nation is best served by voting for Donald J. Trump. I wholeheartedly endorse him for president of the United States.”
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