Arnold Schwarzenegger Says He Isn’t Ready To Endorse Trump
Arnold Schwarzenegger has refused to endorse Donald Trump’s presidential bid.
Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, the Hollywood star and former California governor said that he was not yet ready to back his party’s presumptive nominee in November’s general election.
Schwarzenegger had previously been a staunch supporter of John Kasich, extending him an official endorsement in March and campaigning for the Ohio governor as a moderate alternative to the far-right views of Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
In the wake of Kasich’s inevitable withdrawal from the GOP race, Schwarzenegger has been relatively quiet regarding who he’ll ultimately be supporting in November.
Despite successfully ducking being pushed into backing Trump on Sunday, Schwarzenegger did promise that he would be offering a new endorsement before Election Day.
“I will make an announcement before the election, you can be sure of that,” he said. “But I will do it my way. Which is always an unusual way.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger has not yet endorsed Donald Trump. Will he? https://t.co/x6RprOS1fE pic.twitter.com/BiurYl7kEK
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) May 29, 2016
Signalling he may be intending to swerve across party lines, Schwarzenegger went on to add that he will “study the various different candidates” and what they represent before making his selection.
Schwarzenegger also added that both parties would do well to appeal to America’s moderates, rather than attempt to win over respective party radicals.
“I think it is important we go and bring both parties together,” he said. “This is where the action is, in the middle.”
Schwarzenegger managed to skate around clashing with Trump over the presumed GOP nominee’s controversial take on California’s drought problem.
Last year, America’s most populous state suffered one of its driest years on record. California hit its driest four-year period ever.
But speaking at a rally in Fresno on Friday night, Trump informed supporters that no such drought exists. Instead, he believes that state officials are simply preventing water from working its way across the state in order to try and protect an endangered native fish.
“We’re going to solve your water problem. You have a water problem that is so insane,” Trump said. “It is so ridiculous where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea.”
“There is a drought in California,” Schwarzenegger said. “If we could keep that water, we really only need four to five inches in order to really have all the water that we need. But we send it immediately out into the ocean. So it’s the wrong infrastructure.”
The Hollywood star went on to concede that this was an issue he had unsuccessfully attempted to rectify over the course of his two terms in office.
“I have tried when I was governor to build more infrastructure, and I was not successful,” he said. “It’s a very, very complicated issue in California. And it is very, very hard to build dams or to build infrastructure. So what they do is conservation.”
As Donald Trump begins to work his way across California in order to consolidate his base of support as the Republican Party’s presumed presidential nominee, state Democrats are still bitterly divided.
That being said, one poll conducted last week by SurveyUSA placed Clinton ahead by as much as 18 points.
[Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images]
