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      Schwarzenegger used to exemplify politico-showbiz ridiculousness. Now he's our true moral governator | Peter Bradshaw

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      How amazing. Until a few years ago – 2016, in fact – if you asked people for the most absurd example of the politico-showbusiness complex in the 21st-century United States, they would have said Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recall election as governor of California in 2003, his candidacy being announced on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He was re-elected in 2006, and just about maintained a cheerfully Reaganesque public image of a moderate Republican – uneventfully standing down in 2011 to resume his movie career.We all took the mickey out of the governator. But, right now, he is America’s moral governator with real moral authority. It was the governator who uploaded a video telling Americans to stay home during the Covid crisis. And now it is the governator who has issued a clarion call for decency on YouTube with his admittedly cheesy but genuinely stirring, heartfelt and relevant rebuke to the Trumpians and their desecration of the Capitol – a desecration that even now many Republicans and many sophisticates on the right cannot bring themselves to condemn fully.In his mature Reaganesque style, Schwarzenegger addressed the nation from a presidential-style desk, with the stars and stripes and Californian flag in the background, and a photo of himself in his bodybuilding pomp. With Hollywood-style music on the audio track, he denounced the complicit enablers of Trump’s fascism – culminating in a hilarious flourish of Conan the Barbarian’s sword.That should have been ridiculous. It should have been silly. But, compared with the seedy rightwingers and Fox News alternative-fact merchants and the giggling cynics who said Trump didn’t matter, Schwarzenegger’s sword was rather glorious. I found myself thinking of Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy – and, yes, however preposterous, there was something honourable about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan sword.Schwarzenegger called the vandalising of the Capitol (and the killing of Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick) America’s “Kristallnacht”. Like many others, I have seen it as America’s beer hall putsch (and who knows if that may not turn out to be the closer analogy?). But, for the time being, Schwarzenegger is absolutely right. And from personal experience, Schwarzenegger was able to address the openly Nazi stylings of the Capitol attackers, with the “Camp Auschwitz” T-shirts, because he grew up in an Austria that, in contrast to Germany, went into fierce denial about its role in the second world war. Schwarzenegger spoke about his angry, depressed and abusive father who beat his children. (Schwarzenegger did not speak in detail, but throughout his governorship much press research went into Gustav Schwarzenegger, the Austrian police chief and Stalingrad military veteran who applied for Nazi party membership in 1938 before the Anschluss, but was not found to have been responsible for war crimes or abuse.)Schwarzenegger’s video today, however schmaltzy and hokey in style, was a real reminder to the fatuous callow right that Nazis and nazism are not just death-metal icons or gamer fantasies. They really did exist, with America-first cheerleaders such as Joseph Kennedy and Charles Lindbergh encouraging their fellow citizens to look the other way. And he also showed us that the immigrant experience can bring wisdom.Arnold’s video is exactly what we all needed. More

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      Republican civil war: what's the party’s future after the US Capitol attack?

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      The motives that drove a pro-Donald Trump mob to attack Congress last Wednesday ranged from hazy to proudly hateful. But the actions of certain ambitious Republican officeholders in the days leading up to the tragedy were not clouded by confusion.Trump may have lost the election, but his movement was on the march, and for politicians hoping someday to succeed Trump as president, that meant an opportunity was afoot.With Trump now finally accepting he will leave office, the future leadership of his movement is increasingly up for grabs, with a ragtag band of senators, congressman, Trump family members – and Trump himself – already jostling for the position.Whether anyone apart from the president is able to successfully ride the tiger of racism, nihilism and grievance politics that carried Trump to near-re-election after four years of American chaos and hundreds of thousands of preventable pandemic deaths is an open question.It also might be an irrelevant question, if Trump decides to stage a 2023-24 stadium tour doubling as a new presidential campaign.“Absent disqualification, the 2024 GOP presidential nomination remains his if he wants it,” tweeted Dave Wasserman, Congress editor of the Cook Political Report.But with Trump gone, for the moment, after years of rock-like reign over the Republican party, powerful currents of political ambition and realignment have swirled into the vacuum.Longtime Trump loyalists, chief among them the vice-president, Mike Pence, have suddenly broken with the president over his fight to reverse the election result. Mick Mulvaney, the former chief of staff and special envoy to Northern Ireland whose loyalty helped Trump escape conviction in the impeachment scandal, resigned over the Capitol riot debacle, saying: “I can’t do it. I can’t stay.”Two firebrand conservative senators, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, went the other direction, taking up Trump’s cause – only to see their campaign result almost immediately in the death of a police officer and four others, and the vandalization of the US Capitol.A third young senator with designs on the presidency, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, blasted his plotting colleagues “who, for political advantage, were giving false hope to their supporters”, he said. The Republican old guard, meanwhile, in the guise of Mitt Romney, who has actually run for president – twice – accused his colleagues of being “complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy”.Even the former Republican House speaker John Boehner, who since his 2015 retirement has mostly limited his commentary on politics to tweeted pictures of himself mowing his lawn, said the Grand Old party (GOP) was in trouble.“I once said the party of Lincoln and Reagan is off taking a nap,” Boehner wrote on Thursday. “The nap has become a nightmare for our nation. The GOP must awaken.”For certain Republicans, the violent and deadly near-sacking of the Capitol on Wednesday by white supremacists and other Trump sympathizers seemed to be only the second most disturbing event of the week.The night before, Republicans had lost two runoff US senate elections in Georgia, a state that until 2020 had not voted for a Democrat for president for 30 years. The two Georgia losses meant that Republicans lost control of the Senate – and leader Mitch McConnell lost his majority.“Emotions [are] running high among McConnell-aligned Republicans,” National Journal columnist Josh Kraushaar reported, “after [the] reality of what transpired in Georgia settled in. May be the heat of the moment, but mood is for declaring war on Team Trump.”A former McConnell chief of staff and campaign manager, Josh Holmes, was quick to knock down the idea.“A lot of emotions. People are angry,” Holmes replied on Twitter to Kraushaar. “Nobody is declaring war on anything. We’ll get through this.”But even the people with money, whose interests McConnell has expertly defended, grew agitated at the mess Trump had made.“This is sedition and should be treated as such,” Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, an influential business trade group, said. “The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power, and any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the constitution and rejecting democracy in favor of anarchy.” The chiefs of multiple Wall Street banks echoed the sentiment.That is not even to mention the cavalcade of Republicans who had long since broken with Trump, who piled on the president after the Capitol was sacked. The conservative columnist George Will said: “The three repulsive architects of Wednesday’s heartbreaking spectacle” – Trump, Hawley and Cruz – “will each wear the scarlet ‘S’ of sedition.” The conservative National Journal declared: “Trump must pay.” Matt Drudge’s web ite ran the sarcastic banner “Thanks, Donald”. The National Review hailed “Trump’s final insult”. A second former Trump chief of staff, John Kelly, joined those calling for his immediate removal from office.The Republican cross-currents do not mean that the party will not find direction in time to win back the Senate, plus the House, in 2022 – or to win the presidency in 2024, whether with Trump’s name on the ticket or tattooed on the nominee’s forehead.But Trump’s role in the party, and the politics, has never been to introduce order, except when that means that everybody falls behind him. For now, everybody is doing the opposite: falling out. More

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      Schwarzenegger rebukes Trump and compares Capitol riot to Kristallnacht

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      Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a stinging rebuke of Donald Trump on Sunday, comparing the riot at the US Capitol which the president incited to Kristallnacht, the night in November 1938 when Nazi thugs attacked Jewish Germans and their property, a harbinger of horrors to come.
      He also compared American democracy to a weapon he wielded onscreen in the loincloth of Conan the Barbarian nearly 40 years ago, saying: “Our democracy is like the steel of this sword. The more it is tempered, the stronger it becomes.”
      Trump supporters broke into the Capitol on Wednesday after the president told them to “fight like hell” in support of his attempt to overturn election defeat by Joe Biden. Five people died, including a Capitol police officer who was hit with a fire extinguisher and a rioter shot by law enforcement.
      Authorities have made numerous arrests, among them one man charged with bringing firearms and explosives to Washington and another who allegedly threatened to kill House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Chants of “Hang Mike Pence” were heard and one rioter was seen carrying plastic “zip tie” handcuffs, suggesting plans to kidnap lawmakers.
      Trump, who will leave office on 20 January, now faces a second impeachment.
      As a two-term governor of California as well as the star of the Terminator franchise and other action classics, Schwarzenegger maintains a presence and a voice in Republican politics. He has clashed with Trump before.
      On Sunday, in a video posted to social media and scored to rousing classical music, the 73-year-old said he “would like to say a few words to my fellow Americans and to our friends around the world about the events of recent days”.
      “I grew up in Austria and was very aware of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass,” he said. “It was a night of rampage against the Jews carried out [by] the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys [a quasi-fascist group of Trump supporters].”
      “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. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. It has shattered the ideals we took for granted. 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.”
      On Sunday it was reported that another officer had died, though it was not immediately clear if the death was related to the Capitol riot.
      Schwarzenegger described a traumatic childhood in post-war Austria, the son of a police officer who joined the Nazi party.
      “I have seen firsthand how things can spin out of control,” Schwarzenegger said. “I know there is a fear in this country and all over the world that something like this could happen right here. I do not believe it is.
      “But I do believe that we must be aware of the dire consequences of selfishness and cynicism. President Trump sought to overturn the results of an election. And a fair election. He sought a coup by misleading people with lies. My father and our neighbours were misled also with lies. I know where such lies lead.
      “President Trump is a failed leader. He will go down in history as the worst president ever. The good thing is he soon will be as irrelevant as an old tweet.”
      Schwarzenegger appealed to Americans’ patriotism and commended lawmakers who regathered after the assault on the Capitol to confirm Biden’s victory, despite objections from 147 Republican representatives and senators. More

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      House lawmakers may have been exposed to Covid-19 during Capitol riot

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      House lawmakers may have been exposed to someone testing positive for Covid-19 while they sheltered at an undisclosed location during the Capitol riot by a violent mob loyal to Donald Trump.The Capitol’s attending physician notified all lawmakers on Sunday of the virus exposure and urged them to be tested. The infected individual was not named.Dr Brian Moynihan wrote that on Wednesday, “many members of the House community were in protective isolation in the large room – some for several hours” and “individuals may have been exposed to another occupant with coronavirus infection”.Dozens of lawmakers were whisked to the secure location after pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, breaking barricades to roam halls and offices and ransack the building.Some members of Congress huddled for hours in the large room, while others were there for a shorter period.Some lawmakers and staff were furious after video surfaced of Republicans not wearing their masks in the room during lockdown.Newly elected Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a presidential ally aligned with the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory, was among those Republicans not wearing masks.No further details were provided on which person has tested positive for the virus. More

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      Police officer crushed in doorway by rioters during Capitol breach – video

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      This is the moment a police officer was crushed in a doorway after rioters stormed the US Capitol building. The clip captures the moment a large group of rioters heaved against police trying to prevent them from entering the Capitol building. Police have confirmed that more charges against rioters have been made. By Saturday, prosecutors had filed 17 cases in federal district court and 40 in District of Columbia superior court for offences ranging from assaulting police officers to entering restricted areas, stealing federal property and threatening lawmakers
      Police arrest more Capitol rioters as details of violence and brutality emerge More

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      'Descended into madness': second Republican senator says Trump must go

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      Democrats calling for Donald Trump’s removal following the deadly US Capitol riots will introduce articles of impeachment as early as Monday, but may be willing to wait for a Senate trial until long after Joe Biden takes office in nine days’ time.Political chess in Washington continued on Sunday, as the White House belatedly lowered its US flag to half-staff, in honour of those who died on Wednesday.From the Senate, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he had asked FBI director Christopher Wray “relentlessly pursue” the attackers.“The threat of violent extremist groups remains high,” Schumer said in a statement, pointing to Biden’s inauguration on 20 January. Security has been stepped up around the Capitol.Trump faced growing calls from within his own party to step down, with one prominent Republican senator accusing him of a “descent into madness” over his goading of the insurrection that left five dead.“The behaviour was outrageous, and there should be accountability,” Pat Toomey, of Pennsylvania, told CNN’s State of the Union. “The president’s behaviour after the election was wildly different than his behaviour before he descended into a level of madness and engaged in activity that was just absolutely unthinkable and unforgivable.”Trump’s resignation, Toomey said, becoming the second Republican senator to call for the president to go, “is the best path forward, the best way to get this person in the rearview mirror.”In a survey by ABC News and Ipsos published on Sunday, 56% of respondents said Trump should be removed before inauguration day, 20 January. A higher number, 67%, held Trump responsible for the Capitol violence.The president remained at the White House on Sunday, silent without his Twitter account and isolated even from Vice-President Mike Pence, according to reports, as senior Democrats plotted their next steps.James Clyburn, the House majority whip, told CNN a single article of impeachment, which accuses Trump of “inciting an insurrection” and having “gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions”, would be presented to the House of Representatives.“It may be Tuesday or Wednesday before action is taken but it will be taken this week,” Clyburn said.A vote to impeach Trump for a second time, a near certainty given the Democratic House majority, would send the case to the Senate for trial, where a two-thirds majority would see his removal.But the timing is at the discretion of House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would likely choose to wait until after Biden’s inauguration, Clyburn said. Biden has been lukewarm about an impeachment, and concerns are growing among Democrats that an early trial would distract from important Senate business, such as confirming cabinet members and passing Covid-19 relief.“Let’s give President Biden the 100 days he needs to get his agenda off and running and maybe we’ll send the articles sometime after that,” Clyburn said.The congressman also promoted a possible second article of impeachment, related to Trump’s false claims of election fraud and an infamous call pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to reverse defeat there.“We heard it on the phone, begging at one time, ordering at another time, and threatening criminal action to overturn the vote to find him 11,700 odd votes. And he did it in order to be declared the victor. That is impeachable,” he said.Yesterday’s events continued the fast-moving pace of developments since a mob attacked the Capitol, smashing, stealing and confronting law enforcement. A Capitol police officer died, reportedly after being struck with a fire extinguisher. One Trump supporter was shot and killed by law enforcement.Multiple arrests have been made, including of men who brought firearms and explosives to Washington. Rioters were reportedly seen with handcuffs, indicating plans to kidnap lawmakers. Outside, protesters brandished a gallows and noose. Inside, chants of “Hang Mike Pence” were heard, directed at the vice-president presiding over the electoral college count.On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the attending physician to Congress told members that those who took refuge in a “large committee hearing space” may have been exposed to someone with a coronavirus infection.On Friday Trump, who urged supporters to march on Congress, saw his Twitter account suspended, denying him the mouthpiece he has used to spread lies and incite violence.The backlash against Trump has continued to gain momentum, with several cabinet members and allies resigning and chatter increasing about a possible invocation of the 25th amendment, which provides for the removal of a president deemed incapable.But any such move seems certain not to succeed and other Republicans, including Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, have called for Trump to resign in favour of Pence, thereby echoing Richard Nixon’s decision to hand power to Gerald Ford in 1974. That also seems unlikely.“Every minute and every hour that [Trump] is in office represents a clear and present danger, not just to the United States Congress but, frankly, to the country,” the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told ABC’s This Week.“If we allow insurrection against the United States with impunity, with no accountability, we are inviting it to happen again. If a foreign head of state ordered an attack on the United States Congress, would we say that that should not be prosecuted? No. It is an act of insurrection. It’s an act of hostility.”The Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, a vocal Trump critic, said the president had instigated “one of the worst days in American history. He stirred up a crowd. It was an executive branch attack on the legislative branch. We were very close to actually having members of Congress killed. We were blessed on one hand to not losing members of Congress, but we lost five people and it’s disgusting.”There has also been fierce criticism of senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who objected to the certification of Biden’s win after the riot and now face calls to resign.The FBI and other agencies are continuing their examination of the circumstances of the insurrection, including allegations that Pentagon officials loyal to Trump blocked the deployment of national guard troops for three hours after officials in Washington called for help.“We couldn’t actually cross over the border into DC without the OK and that was quite some time [coming],” the Republican governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, told CNN.“Eventually I got a call from Brian McCarthy, the secretary of the army, asking if we could come into the city, but we had already been mobilising, we already had our police, we already had our guard mobilised, and we were just waiting for that call.” More

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      Police arrest more Capitol rioters as details of violence and brutality emerge

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      Police have confirmed more charges against rioters who stormed the US Capitol, as more graphic details of violence and brutality emerge.
      By Saturday, prosecutors had filed 17 cases in federal district court and 40 in District of Columbia superior court for offenses ranging from assaulting police officers to entering restricted areas, stealing federal property and threatening lawmakers.
      Donald Trump seems certain to be impeached over the riot, which he incited in remarks to supporters outside the White House. South Carolina Democrat James Clyburn told Fox News Sunday the House could vote to impeach as early as this week, but may wait months to submit the articles for a trial in the Senate.
      “If we are the people’s House, let’s do the people’s work and let’s vote to impeach this president,” the House majority whip said.
      As politicians contended over Trump’s fate, alarming footage of the riot continued to emerge. Some captured a bloodied officer being crushed in a doorway and screaming. Other officers were reportedly beaten with pipes, with one seen tumbling over a railing into a crowd below. The officer had been body-slammed from behind.

      Brian Sicknick, 42 and a 12-year veteran officer, died after he was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher while “physically engaging” the rioters, according to a statement from Capitol police.
      On Sunday it was reported that another Capitol officer had died, though the cause of death was not released. Speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation, the Missouri senator Roy Blunt said: “Officer Sicknick, now Officer [Howard] Liebengood, both their lives were ended this week. I’ll be interested in finding out if there was a connection with Officer Liebengood.
      “But mostly I’m interested in reaching out to both of these families. These are people we saw every day, particularly Officer Liebengood, who was very much assigned to the Senate side of the building. And, you know, you have that loss.
      “You have four other deaths of people who got involved in something that they absolutely should not have gotten involved in.”
      One pro-Trump rioter was shot and killed by law enforcement. The other deaths involved medical emergencies.
      The attack forced lawmakers to go into hiding for hours, delaying their voting to affirm Joe Biden’s election win. More

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      Mary Trump: ‘My uncle is unstable. He needs to be removed immediately’

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      The niece of the US president fears he could wreak more damage to democracyTwo weeks before the election, Mary Trump described her uncle Donald’s campaign to me in stark terms: “He knows he’s in desperate shape, so he’s going to burn it all down, sow more chaos and division…[and] if he’s going down, he’s going to take us all down with him.” In the Observer’s Biden/Harris victory edition, as she considered the loser’s remaining weeks in office, her tone was still edgy. “I worry about what Donald’s going to do in that time to lash out.”The storming of the Capitol still shocked her. “What struck me first was how degrading it was. That amount of desecration. The tawdriness of it. Tawdriness is who Donald is, but playing out in the halls of Congress.” She describes the people vandalising offices, carrying Confederate flags, wearing Camp Auschwitz T-shirts – and yet Trump’s message to them was how much they were loved. Continue reading… More