During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) dismissed a claim from host Jake Tapper to suggest Republicans were to blame for the national political battles over redistricting.
Partial transcript as follows:
TAPPER: As you acknowledged, this all started because of redistricting in Texas. And this was Trump pushing Republican- controlled states to throw out their current congressional maps, so as to cook the books so that there is less — it is less likely for Democrats to retake control of the House during the next-year midterms.
SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, no, Jake.
TAPPER: I mean, is it fair to argue that — do you believe that the Republican Party is starting this?
SCHWARZENEGGER: Yes. No, Jake, there has been gerrymandering going on for 200 years. There is such extreme gerrymandering going on that, in a state like Massachusetts, that has like 40 percent of the people voting for Trump, they only had — they had have zero representatives.
The Republican Party has zero representatives sent to the House. Think about that. In New Mexico, 45 percent of the people voted for Trump and vote Republican, and zero is sent to the House, zero representative from the Republican Party.
So there’s gerrymandering, crazy gerrymandering going on all over the country. And we wanted to try to stop it in California, and we did stop it in California and we went around the country. So I think this whole thing about finger-pointing and say they did it, so therefore we should — doing it, that’s not really the way to go, that one party should outperform the other party. It should be performance.
And when it comes to midterm elections, as you know, always the party that is not in the White House usually wins by 20, 25, 30 seats. So what does five seats matter in the first place in Texas? It is crazy. We should outperform them. That is where the action is.
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