With less than a week until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris’ list of Republican backers continues to grow. On Wednesday, the vice president picked up another major endorsement: Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The actor and former Republican governor of California, who rarely offers political endorsements, shared his support for Harris on X. In a lengthy statement, Schwarzenegger, 77, said, “It is probably not a surprise that I hate politics more than ever,” and acknowledged that like most Americans he just wanted to “tune out” this election cycle.
“But I can’t,” he continued, before issuing a stark rebuke of his party’s presidential candidate, Donald Trump: “Because rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets. 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.”
“A candidate who won’t respect your vote unless it is for him, a candidate who will send his followers to storm the Capitol while he watches with a Diet Coke, a candidate who has shown no ability to work to pass any policy besides a tax cut that helped his donors and other rich people like me but helped no one else, a candidate who thinks Americans who disagree with him are the bigger enemies than China, Russia, or North Korea — that won’t solve our problems,” Schwarzenegger wrote.
The former governor, who served from 2003 to 2011, said he will, “always be an American before I am a Republican.”
He urged voters to “close the door on this chapter of history” and said another Trump administration would, “just be four more years of bulls---- with no results that makes us angrier and angrier, more divided, and more hateful.”
Trump and Schwarzenegger, both celebrities who later turned to a career in politics, have sparred in the past. In 2017, after Schwarzenegger replaced Trump as the host of NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice," the then-president mocked the show's falling viewership, asking attendees at the National Prayer Breakfast to "pray" for the low ratings of his former TV series.
Schwarzenegger responded by suggesting the two switch jobs, "You can take over TV — because you’re such an expert in ratings —and I take over your job, then people can finally sleep comfortably again," he said in a video posted to Instagram.
The former governor previously endorsed former Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the 2016 GOP primary and urged him to run again to challenge Trump in 2020.
Schwarzenegger ended his post by acknowledging that while he doesn't agree with the Democratic ticket on policy, he believes they are still the best option for the future of America, “I want to move forward as a country, and even though I have plenty of disagreements with their platform, I think the only way to do that is with Harris and Walz,” he wrote. “Vote this week. Turn the page and put this junk behind us.”