Tonight as we continue to
report the fallout from Donald Trump's
criminal indictment.
We're talking to
perhaps the most famous Republican
in the country outside of Trump himself
about the federal case
against the former president.
The current state
of our deeply divided country
and the one frame,
even this bodybuilder turned movie
star turned politician
could not make come true.
Former California Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger, welcome.
It's great to talk to you again.
And I want to start with the basics.
Do you prefer being called governor
or Arnold
It makes no difference to me.
I get called anything and everything.
You know,
when I go to Sacramento,
they call me the governor
and they go down to the Gold's Gym
they call me Arnold
and they go to Austria.
The call me schnitzel
or Kraut or whatever.
I mean, so I get every title
that you could think of.
Well,
to close between Arnold and schnitzel,
but I think I'll go with Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
The Constitution said
that a president
has to be a natural born U.S.
citizen, if not for that.
Would you have run for president?
Well, yes, of course.
I mean,
I think the field was wide open in 2016
and I think the field is open right now.
I mean, think about it right now.
I mean, who is there
that is
really a person
that can bring everyone together.
Who is the other day
that people say, okay, he's not too old
or he's not to this to do that?
Or is that
because it's now a question about
who do you vote against
rather than who do you vote for?
So you're saying you would run
for president in 20, 24? Absolutely.
Because it's a look it's a no brainer
I see so clearly how he could win
the election.
I mean, it's like me in California in it
when I was,
you know, running for governor,
it was clear
that people are looking
for some new answer,
not a right wing or a left wing,
but someone that can
bring the nation together.
This is just so many things
that need to be done and can be done.
And what makes it so wonderful
is because it's doable.
It's all doable.
All it needs is just
people coming together
and saying, yes, we can do it.
You've put out some videos
in recent years
that I want to ask you about.
You put out
this video
right after the insurrection
on January 6th. Take a look
Wednesday was the day of
broken glass right here
in the United States.
The broken glass was in the windows
of the United States Capitol.
President Trump is a failed leader.
He will go down in history
as the worst president ever.
The good thing is
the decision
will be as irrelevant as an old tweet.
Another night of broken glass or crystal
knock was in 1938 when Nazi sympathizers
ransacked Jewish stores and
and synagogues and schools.
Do you still think it's fair to compare
Kristallnacht, the Nazi
attack on the Jews,
to what happened on January 6th?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I think that is
of course a different time and all that.
But it is kind of like
a threat to democracy and a threat
of what happens to people
when they're lied to.
And this is why I compared it to that
because in Kristallnacht and to the
I know with my father
who was part of the Nazi Party,
you know, they were lied to,
they were misled.
And I think a lot of people in America
today are being misled.
But you were wrong about Donald Trump.
You said he's going to be irrelevant.
He's not.
In fact, he's
the leading candidate
for the Republican nomination.
It's you know, we don't know the future.
I just predicted that.
But we will see.
And remember, the future still goes on
So we will see in the few years from now
how right it was
and that I cannot prove it right now.
But eventually I think it will be true.
I will be right
now Mr.
Trump has been
indicted on federal charges,
but most of the top Republican officials
are siding with him
against the special prosecutor.
How do you explain that?
Well, first of all,
I'm not an expert in this issue.
I just can tell you one thing, that
if the charges are correct,
then he's going to be in deep trouble.
But at the same time, I have to say that,
you know,
we always innocent until proven guilty.
So we will find out what the courts say
in the future.
But, I mean, if the judges are right,
I think
there's going to be in deep trouble.
And how worried are you about
the fact that
he could be reelected president?
I'm not worried about it
because I don't think
it's going to happen.
I just don't think that you get reelected
with 30%
or 33% of the people
voting for you
all you need in your polls.
I think that's dead.
There's a great poll numbers
among conservatives,
but I think if you put it all together,
it's not enough.
You need to swing voters.
You need independents.
And so the question is, can you do that?
I, I believe he can.
In March, you put out another video
about the rise of anti-Semitism
in this country and around the world.
Here you are
there has never been a successful movement
based on hate.
I mean, think about that.
The Nazis losers,
the Confederacy
loses, the apartheid movement loses,
and the list goes on and on.
I don't want you to be a loser.
How do you explain all the hate
and what do you think it will take
in the U.S.
and around the world for the fever,
the hate to end?
I mean, people really are starving
for something positive.
There's just so much on social media
and online out there that is negative
negative, negative, negative.
So, you know,
I think that has an impact on people
the way they feel about things.
And so what I want to do is
I want to
pull people out of that negativism
and just make them
give them something positive
to tell them that they're good.
Tell them their training well.
Tell them that they're in good shape,
that there is hope for them
in all of this stuff.
And so I just
I think this is where
the action is today.
And I'm always been an optimist.
I always have been the positive person
and yes,
there's a lot of things
I don't like,
but it doesn't mean that
I have to hate the people.
And I think that's what we
have to do about racial
problems.
That we have about, you know,
gay people and all of this kind of stuff.
Immigrants and Mexicans and Russians
and this,
we just have to go
and just come together.
It doesn't matter who it is,
no matter how different they are
and respect them as human beings
and try to see their point of view.
You're also deeply involved
in the environment.
You run an annual conference
called the Austrian World Summit.
You said something
interesting recently that
you don't like the phrase climate change.
You think it's bad marketing.
What do you mean?
Well,
because when you talk about climate
change, it's
something that always is
referred to as something
that is going to happen
down the line
or it's going to gradually happen
and people's minds.
Our brain
is not wired to respond
to something down the line.
So therefore,
let's
look at something
that is really
the cause of climate change,
which is pollution.
If we fight pollution,
then everyone will get on board.
But if you say climate change,
the Republicans
will immediately run the other way
because it's one of those buzzwords
that they hate.
According to the World
Health Organization, 7 million people
a year die
because of pollution,
not because of climate change.
Yes, there's maybe
a few hundred people dying here and there
because of a flood of fire
or something like that.
But not like pollution.
So we should talk about pollution.
That is what works.
You are so busy these days.
You are starring in a wildly popular
series on Netflix,
your first TV series called FUBAR,
in which you play a CIA operative
who's just about to retire
when he's called out
to help
save another operative who turns out
to be his daughter. Here you are.
I'm a I'm a parent.
Take him out
Bouncing all over the place
and get a shot off.
You were able to hit me
that was my lead from
I got to say, the story's fine,
but for me,
the delight is seeing Arnold
be Arnold again.
But well, I think that it's one of those
kind of great TV series
that was so well-written
that I could be myself
I could do the humor,
I could do the action,
I could do the serious stuff.
I mean,
it gives with all the different layers.
So it was just well-written.
The writers were fantastic.
And they did a really great job.
And they promised me
they're going to go and deliver to me
eight scripts
that are very close
to the idea of True Lies.
Then I believe them,
and they pulled it off.
Okay, you're 75 years old.
You've got all the money in the world.
Why on earth
are you jumping around moving vehicles?
Well, to be honest with you, Chris,
I don't think I ever was motivated
by anything that I've done
because of money.
It was always just because I enjoyed.
I love bodybuilding
and loves getting into movies
and doing all the scenes.
Yes.
You you go and start
getting more and more money
because that's your value.
But it's not about that.
You really have to love
what you're doing.
So why are you doing that?
I just love doing it.
It's always every day,
something different and I love that.