In one of the stranger moments, Schwarzenegger also picked up a sword — one he said belonged to Conan the Barbarian — the character he played in the 1982 film by the same name. “Our democracy is like the steel of this sword,” he said. “The more it is tempered, the stronger it becomes.”
Schwarzenegger, a Republican, also criticized GOP members for not standing up to Trump and, in some cases, indulging his attempts at insurrection, “But what are we to make of those elected officials who have enabled his lies and his treachery? I will remind them of what Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘Patriotism means to stand by the country, it does not mean to stand by the president.’ John F. Kennedy wrote a book called Profiles in Courage. A number of members of my own party because of their spinelessness will never see their names in such a book, I guarantee you. They’re complicit with those who cared the flag of self-righteous insurrection into the Capitol. But it did not work.”
He added, “We need to hold accountable the people that brought us to this unforgivable point. And we need to look past ourselves, our parties and disagreements, and put our democracy first. And we need to heal, together, from the drama that just happened. We need to heal, not just as Republicans and Democrats, but as Americans.”