Arnold Schwarzenegger likened Trump supporters’ violent breach of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday to the Nazis’ Kristallnacht during a video he tweeted out Sunday.
In the video, the former California governor responded to the attack on the Capitol and compared it to Kristallnacht, or the Night of the Broken Glass, when Nazis attacked Jews, destroying storefronts and synagogues. (RELATED: ‘Utterly Shameful’: Josh Hawley Strikes Back After Joe Biden Likens Him To Nazi Propagandist)
“I grew up in Austria. I’m very aware of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass,” Schwarzenegger explained, according to Fox46. “It was a night of rampage carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys.”
My message to my fellow Americans and friends around the world following this week’s attack on the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/blOy35LWJ5
— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) January 10, 2021
“Wednesday was the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States,” he continued. “The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol.”
“But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. They shattered the ideas we took for granted,” Schwarzenegger said. “They did not just break down the doors of the building that housed American democracy. They trampled the very principles on which our country was founded.”
Schwarzenegger, who was born in Austria in 1947, continued on to discuss his childhood growing up in “the ruins of a country that suffered the loss of its democracy.”
“Growing up, I was surrounded by broken men drinking away the guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history,” he said.
Schwarzenegger went on to explain that his father was one of those men that “would come home drunk once or twice a week, and he would scream and hit us and scare my mother.”
“President Trump sought to overturn the results of an election and of a fair election. He sought a coup by misleading people with lies,” Schwarzenegger stated. “My father and our neighbors were misled also with lies, and I know where such lies lead.”
As he finished the nearly eight-minute video, Schwarzenegger called for healing and uniting behind President-elect Joe Biden.
“We need to heal, not just as Republicans or as Democrats, but as Americans.”