Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger shared a video on Sunday in which he said the violent attack on the US Capitol reminded him of the events that led to Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party coming to power in Germany. The well-known actor also blasted Donald Trump, saying that he will go down in history as a "failed leader."
In the video message, he denounced Trump and some of his fellow Republicans. "President Trump sought to overturn the results of an election, and of a fair election. He sought a coup by misleading people with lies. My father and neighbors were misled also with lies," said Schwarzenegger.
He then criticized some members of his own party and said that because of their spinelessness no one would see their names in the books like John F. Kennedy's 'Profiles in Courage'. "They're complicit with those who carried the flag of self-righteous insurrection into the Capitol," he added.
'Night of Broken Glass'
While talking about the last week's Capitol riot, Schwarzenegger compared the incident to Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass", the 1938 Nazi attack against Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues.
Schwarzenegger, who was born in Austria, said that those who carried out that attack were "the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys". He added that January 6 was the "Day of Broken Glass right here" in the US.
According to him, the mob did not just break the windows of the Capitol, they shattered "the ideas we took for granted". In the eight-minute video, the former governor said: "They did not just break down the doors of the building that housed the American democracy, they trampled the very principles on which our country was founded."
Then he got personal and discussed a "painful memory" of growing up after World War II in Austria. He said when he was growing up, he was surrounded by "broken men drinking away the guilt" over their participation in the Nazi regime. Schwarzenegger said his father, who was a Nazi, "would come home drunk once or twice a week, and he would scream and hit us." He didn't think much of it at the time because people around him were doing the same thing.
"They were in physical pain from the shrapnel in their bodies and in emotional pain from what they saw or did. It all started with lies, lies, and lies and intolerance," said the Republican.
He has never been shy about criticizing Trump and in the video he called him a failed leader. "I know where such lies lead," he said. But according to him, the good thing is Trump "will soon be as irrelevant as an old tweet."
According to an early interview with WRBL, in the past few years many people from all around the world where he traveled asked him, "what's going on in America. How can a man like this be elected? How do you explain that?"
Schwarzenegger said that the incident that took place at the Capitol was the "finale of four years of craziness".
