Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. gave his backing to former President Trump on Wednesday, while bodybuilder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
Bodybuilder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president on Wednesday, while legendary Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin Jr., gave his backing to former President Trump.
The two endorsements come with just days left until Election Day, with both campaigns stumping heavily in battleground states to shore up votes.
Schwarzenegger, 77, who served as the Republican governor of California from 2003 to 2011, said he was putting country before politics by handing out his second-ever presidential endorsement. In 2016, he endorsed former Ohio Gov. John Kasich in that year’s Republican presidential primaries.
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“Let me be honest with you: I don’t like either party right now. My Republicans have forgotten the beauty of the free market, driven up deficits, and rejected election results. Democrats aren’t any better at dealing with deficits, and I worry about their local policies hurting our cities with increased crime,” Schwarzenegger wrote in a lengthy post on X.
Schwarzenegger went on to rail about politicians failing to pass “comprehensive immigration reform” and then turned his ire towards former President Trump, calling for the country to “turn the page” on the 45th president, who he says “won’t respect your vote unless it is for him” and “will send his followers to storm the Capitol while he watches with a Diet Coke.”
“Rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets,” he wrote.
“A candidate who has shown no ability to work to pass any policy besides a tax cut that helped his donors and other rich people like me but helped no one else…, a candidate who thinks Americans who disagree with him are the bigger enemies than China, Russia, or North Korea – that won’t solve our problems,” wrote Schwarzenegger, known for his role in several “Terminator” franchise movies.
“It will just be four more years of bulls— with no results that makes us angrier and angrier, more divided, and more hateful,” he wrote before throwing his support behind the Harris-Walz ticket, without outlining any of their campaign policies he supports.
Aldrin, 94, the second person to walk on the moon after mission commander Neil Armstrong, according to NASA, threw his weight behind Trump, touting the former president’s efforts to elevate space exploration as a “policy of high importance again” and that his administration “reignited national efforts to get back to the Moon and push on to Mars.”
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“The Trump Administration also reinstituted the National Space Council, and our Nation’s defense was enhanced with the creation of the U.S. Space Force – increasingly important as space becomes a contested domain,” Aldrin wrote on X.
“At the same time, I have been enthused and excited by the great advancements in the private sector space economy, led by visionaries like Elon Musk. These are concrete accomplishments that align with my concerns and America’s policy priorities.”
Aldrin said that former President Trump is the candidate who has the right attributes to lead America, which is facing “serious and difficult challenges both at home and abroad.”
“The Presidency requires clarity in judgement, decisiveness, and calm under pressure that few have a natural ability to manage, or the life experience to successfully undertake. It is a job where decisions are made that routinely involve American lives – some urgently but not without thought,” Aldrin wrote.
“For me, for the future of our country, to meet enormous challenges, and for the proven policy accomplishments above, I believe we are best served by voting for former President Trump. I wholeheartedly endorse him for President of the United States. Godspeed President Trump, and God Bless the United States of America.”
Aldrin’s endorsement was welcomed by the former president, who commented on the show of support at a rally in North Carolina on Wednesday.
“Buzz Aldrin, very respected, the great astronaut and highly respected. But I thought it was an unusual,” Trump said before straying to note that outlets like The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have refused to make endorsements, which he said is a rejection of Harris.
“But Buzz Aldrin is very interesting because a great astronaut… He’s a very sound man and great, looks fantastic.
“What he said is ‘I’ve never endorsed anybody in my life before… This is the first time I’ve ever made an endorsement… I’m endorsing Donald J. Trump.’ Isn’t that nice? So thank you, Buzz Aldrin. And I like him, too. I’ve always admired him.”
Fox News’ Danielle Wallace and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
