As protests continue over ICE raids in Los Angeles and more, Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t think politicians should be surprised. According to the former California governor, pushback is the only logical outcome, given our leaders’ actions.
Schwarzenegger stopped by “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on Wednesday night in support of the new season of his show “Fubar” on Netflix, but before anything else, he and the ABC host got into politics. Looking back on Schwarzenegger’s time as governor, Kimmel joked, “Remember when you were the governor and everything was pretty good? Everything was — everybody seemed pretty happy back then, huh?”
Schwarzenegger retorted that even now, people are happy around him, just because of who he is. But, speaking seriously, he turned his attention to the protests in Los Angeles, saying they wouldn’t even be happening if politicians just actually worked on solving issues.
“For decades, almost four decades, we have had a problem where they talked about immigration reform, comprehensive immigration reform,” Schwarzenegger said. “But the Democrats and the Republicans, both of the parties, have no interest in solving this problem, because they use that to raise money.”
“And so what they do is they just keep pointing the finger at each other, and then they’re surprised if all of a sudden we are using our middle finger on them, right?” he continued.
The actor also lamented that the severity and reach of the protests is being exaggerated by both media and the Trump administration.
“They make it out to like it is a war zone, the whole Los Angeles, the whole city or the county,” Schwarzenegger said. “And the fact of the matter is, maybe 0.001% of the area of Los Angeles has problems, and there’s a protest.”
“And so I think that this is important for people to know, because I don’t want, all of a sudden, tourism to suffer in Los Angeles because what they see on television,” Schwarzenegger continued, with Kimmel agreeing. “Because the media sometimes shows it as if the whole Los Angeles is a big war zone, which isn’t really the case.”
You can watch Arnold Schwarzenegger’s full appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in the video above.
