Arnold Schwarzenegger Says Anyone Who Won’t Get Vaccinated or Wear a Mask is a ‘Schmuck’

“Screw your freedom. Because with freedom comes obligations and responsibilities.”

The Terminator star and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has had it up to his pecs with anti-mask and anti-vaccine skeptics and refuseniks. 

Speaking to National Security Council staffer Alexander Vindman and CNN’s Bianna Golodryga, Schwarzenegger was unequivocal in his condemnation of the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 and of fellow Americans who think their actions (or lack of action) regarding the coronavirus has no effect on others.

Here’s where the actor who created the unstoppable force known as The Terminator laid it on the line:

A year and a half later, we are still in a mess and there are still people living in denial, there are still people that don’t believe in masks, there are still people out there who say, ‘Well, we don’t have to do social distancing,‘ and all this kind of stuff. 

And I just think that people ought to be reminded over and over that the experts are saying that we have to wear masks, especially when you go indoors, the experts are saying that you should still wash your hands regularly, you should still do social distancing, especially now with this new comeback of the virus, which is the fourth round now, that we have to really go and work together. 

Look, I am an expert on how to build a bicep…there’s no one who knows more about a bicep than I do because I studied this issue for 50 years. And the same is also with the virus. There are people out there who are experts that studied this year after year after year…Dr. [Anthony Fauci has studied viruses] for his entire life, why would you not believe someone like that?

He wasn’t done letting people have it, however. 

“I think people should know there is a virus here, it kills people,” Schwarzenegger continued, “And the only way we prevent it is we get vaccinated, we wear masks, we do social distancing, washing your hands all of the time, and not just to think about, ‘Well, my freedom is being kind of disturbed here.’ 

“No, screw your freedom. Because with freedom comes obligations and responsibilities. You cannot just say, ‘I have the right to do x, y, and z,’ when you affect other people.”

“That is when it gets serious,” he said, “It’s like, no different than a traffic light. They put the traffic light in the intersection so someone doesn’t kill someone else by accident. You cannot say, ‘No one is going to tell me that I’m going to stop here, I’m going to go right through it.’ Yeah, then you kill someone else.”

His comparison was pretty stark. Schwarzenegger went on to say that Americans “have to come together rather than fighting and always just saying, ‘According to my principles this is a free country and I have the freedom to wear no mask.'” 

“Yeah, you have the freedom to wear no mask,” he concluded, “but you know something? You’re a schmuck for not wearing a mask.”

There have been some notably aggressive protests against anti-COVID measures across the country, like a truly bizarre incident in Franklin, Tennessee — one of the wealthiest enclaves in the state — in which parents escalated to threatening behavior, telling school board members who had voted for a school mask mandate for Williamson County, “We know who you are.”

Not sure anyone wants the Austrian Oak, a still-imposing figure who works out daily, even in his 70s, thinking they’re a schmuck. 

Remember, if he tells you to mask up and you don’t, there’s a good chance he’ll be back.