Arnold Schwarzenegger endorses Kamala Harris: 'I will always be an American before I am a Republican'

Source: The Guardian

Wed 30 Oct 2024 12.26 EDT
Last modified on Wed 30 Oct 2024 14.30 EDT


The former Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that he is backing Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in next week’s election. In a long post on X, Schwarzenegger, 77, said that while he doesn’t “really do endorsements” … “hate[s] politics” and doesn’t “trust most politicians”, he felt compelled to formally endorse Harris and her pick for vice president Tim Walz.

“I will always be an American before I am a Republican,” he wrote. “That’s why, this week, I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I’m sharing it with all of you because I think there are a lot of you who feel like I do. You don’t recognise our country. And you are right to be furious.”

Schwarzenegger, who quit acting between 2003 and 2011 while he served in California, continued by writing that he was disappointed in all those who have been in power in the US over the past decades who have discussed addressing the national debt and “our broken immigration system” yet not managing to do so. This continued during election campaigning, he said, as politicians prefer “having talking points” for elections rather than performing “the public service that will make Americans’ lives better.” “It is a just game to them. But it is life for my fellow Americans. We should be pissed,” Schwarzenegger wrote.

“But 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 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.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/oct/30/arnold-schwarzenegger-endorses-kamala-harris-i-will-always-be-an-american-before-i-am-a-republican