Arnold Schwarzenegger
His career from Reagan fan to Trump opponent
The new US citizen Arnold Schwarzenegger (left) at the side of the then incumbent President Ronald Reagan, 1984.
© imago images / Everett Collection
Arnold Schwarzenegger started as a fan of Ronald Reagan, became governor – and is one of Donald Trump's worst critics.
These days, even die-hard US Republicans have a hard time finding what's great about their "Grand Old Party". Since the storming of the Capitol at the beginning of January, the public enemy number one has had a face for many of them – that of the incumbent US President Donald Trump (74). But while many GOP politicians are only now turning away from troublemakers from within their own ranks at the last second, Arnold Schwarzenegger (73), himself a staunch Republican, has been poisoning Trump for years. He recently drew his conclusion in an emotional video message on Instagram: Trump is the "worst president of all time".
The "Terminator" star already sensed that this would be the case four years ago: "For the first time since I became a US citizen in 1983, I will not vote for the Republican candidate. It is not only legitimate to use the country over the It's your duty, "said Arnie in October 2016, just before Trump was able to prevail against Hillary Clinton and move into the White House.
Almost like Reagan
Indeed, Schwarzenegger has been a Republican since the end of Ronald Reagan's (1981-1989 president) first term, proudly shaking hands with the former Hollywood star at the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas. And like Reagan, he would also like to move from the dream factory to the Oval Office – if he were allowed to: "If I had been born in America, I would be a candidate," Schwarzenegger once told Adweek magazine.
But because he saw the light of day in Austria's Styria in 1947, the constitution denies him forever the candidacy for the office of president. As a US citizen, he has enjoyed the election of the Republican candidate three times: in 1989, when George Bush became president, and in 2000 and four years later, when his son George W. Bush even received two terms in office. Schwarzenegger even gave the latter a speech in 2004 in which he celebrated his re-election.
He has that in common with Trump
A year earlier, Arnie had achieved great things. His first term as governor of the state of California began on November 17, 2003, and in 2007 he was re-elected to the prestigious office. As such, he got to know a problem that even unites him with Trump, as he revealed in an interview with "Men's Health" in 2019.
Trump is simply "not able to (mentally) switch from Trump to President". It had similar happened to him: "I saw that with myself too. That I couldn't switch from Arnold to governor. I was stuck as Arnold, who always implements things immediately." But that was exactly what was not possible in the often sluggish politics, as he quickly discovered. "It takes a lot more time, a lot more effort, but that's the way it is. If you don't like it, don't go into politics." A tip that Donald Trump should have taken to heart in his eyes.