Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former Republican politician, repeatedly spoke out against Trump during the 2016 campaign. Schwarzenegger jabs Trump: ‘There are not two sides to bigotry’

Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday called on President Donald Trump to send an “unequivocal message” that he would not stand for the “hate and racism” seen over the weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, rejecting the president’s notion that blame lay with “both sides” taking part in the event.

“There are not two sides to bigotry and there are not two sides to hatred,” the former California governor told the website ATTN in a video interview . “If you choose to march with the flag that symbolizes the slaughter of millions of people, there are not two sides to that.”


Schwarzenegger’s comments serve as a rebuttal to Trump’s assertion during a Tuesday news conference that there was “blame on both sides” of the white supremacist rally Saturday in Virginia that left one person dead and dozens of others injured.

While the White House eventually released an unequivocal rebuke of the hate groups that attended the rally, the president has repeatedly wavered in his public statements on the matter, at times casting the violence as a lamentable tragedy and other times a mutual display of aggression by white nationalists and counter-protesters. His initial failure to denounce white supremacists outright has drawn widespread criticism and scorn from military leaders, business executives and even some Republican lawmakers.

Schwarzenegger, a former Republican politician, repeatedly spoke out against Trump during the 2016 campaign, endorsing his primary opponent John Kasich and vowing not to vote for the GOP ticket once Trump sealed the nomination. Since Trump entered office, Schwarzenegger has been sharply critical of the president’s decision to withdraw from the multinational Paris climate agreement.

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In the ATTN video, the former governor pleaded with Trump to fulfill his obligation as the leading politician in the United States to unequivocally condemn the hatred and violence of Charlottesville.

“The only way to beat the loud and angry voices of hate is to meet them with louder and more reasonable voices, and that includes you, President Trump,” he said.

Schwarzenegger, a native of Austria who became an American movie star and politician, also spoke directly to those who support the white nationalist movement and its foot soldiers in Charlottesville, drawing on his personal experience with the effects of Nazism in post-World War II Europe.

“I was surrounded by broken men, men who came home from a war filled with shrapnels and guilt, men who were misled into a losing ideology,” said Schwarzenegger, who was born two years after the war ended.

“I can tell you that these ghosts you idolize spent the rest of their lives living in shame, and right now they’re resting in hell.”