As the U.S. presidential election enters its final days, Arnold Schwarzenegger has cast his vote for Vice President Kamala Harris to become America’s next leader.
The former Republican governor of California — and frequent critic of former President Donald Trump — took to X to share a lengthy post about why he was backing the Democrats in this year’s election telling his 5.2 million followers he isn’t a fan of “either party right now.”
“My Republicans have forgotten the beauty of the free market, driven up deficits, and rejected election results. Democrats aren’t any better at dealing with deficits, and I worry about their local policies hurting our cities with increased crime,” Schwarzenegger, 77, wrote.
The Terminator star said that he’s doesn’t normally publicly endorse candidates and is distrustful of “most politicians,” but said that he was sharing his thoughts on the contentious election because he recognizes “people want to hear from me.”
“It is probably not a surprise that I hate politics more than ever, which, if you are a normal person who isn’t addicted to this crap, you probably understand. I want to tune out,” he continued.
“But I can’t. Because rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets,” he said, referring to Trump’s refusal to admit he lost the 2020 election. “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 is a trash can for the world is so unpatriotic, it makes me furious. And 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.”
The actor went on to say that his fellow Americans should be “pissed” with the state of their country.
“For decades, we’ve talked about the national debt. For decades, we’ve talked about comprehensive immigration reform that secures the border while fixing our broken immigration system. And Washington does nothing,” he wrote.
“The problems just keep rolling, and we all keep getting angrier, because the only people that benefit from problems aren’t you, the people. The only people that benefit from this crap are the politicians who prefer having talking points to win elections to the public service that will make Americans’ lives better. It is a just game to them.”
But Schwarzenegger said he couldn’t bring himself to vote for Trump, saying if the Republican nominee wins “it will just be four more years of bulls*** with no results.”
“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,” Schwarzenegger wrote.
He continued to bash Trump, predicting that if he’s re-elected Americans will become “angrier and angrier, more divided, and more hateful.”
“We need to close the door on this chapter of American history, and I know that former President Trump won’t do that. He will divide, he will insult, he will find new ways to be more un-American than he already has been, and we, the people, will get nothing but more anger,” he said.
In order for America to “move forward as a country,” Schwarzenegger said he was backing Harris and her running mate Tim Walz as he urged his followers to “turn the page and put this junk behind us.”
Last year, Schwarzenegger joined Rob Lowe for an interview on SiriusXM’s Literally! With Rob Lowe, when the St. Elmo’s Fire star asked him what it meant to be a Democrat.
“Ruin your cities,” he responded. “That’s what the Democrats would say. We are about ruining the cities. We want to f*** up every city in America. That seems to be the theme right now.”
Schwarzenegger is a Republican, but his more centrist views on divisive issues like abortion and climate change have been in opposition to some of his fellow conservatives.
The Austrian-born bodybuilder-turned-actor has been vocal in his opposition to the idea of a Trump return, calling him “the worst president ever” in 2021.
Back in June 2023, Schwarzenegger went a step further and predicted Trump would lose if he tried to run again.
“I just don’t think that you get reelected with 30% or 33% of the people voting for you in your polls,” he said in an interview on CNN’s Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace [per The Hill].
“You need the swing voters. You need the independents, you need everybody to jump in there in order to win,” Schwarzenegger said of Trump’s chances of returning to the White House. “You have to drag a lot of people over across that line. And so the question is, can he do that? I believe he can’t.”
Wallace reminded Schwarzenegger he’s miscalculated Trump’s popularity before when he predicted he was “going to be irrelevant” following the 2021 Capitol riots.
“You said he’s going to be irrelevant. He’s not …,” Wallace said.
“We don’t know the future. I just predicted that,” Schwarzenegger replied. “But we will see — remember the future still goes on. So we will see in a few years from now how right I was or not … eventually, I think it will be true. I will be right.”
Recent polling indicates Trump and Harris are deadlocked in some key swing states, but the 45th president told his supporters Monday in Atlanta he’s “leading now,” imploring his supporters to make the vote “too big to rig.”