Trump Follows Schwarzenegger’s Path

Vanity Fair looks back at Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2003 gubernatorial victory in California and concludes that it wasn’t an aberration, “but proof of concept for the Republican candidate of the future. It was Donald Trump’s road map.”

“Like Trump, Schwarzenegger the Politician just sort of materialized one day. He wasn’t particularly known as somebody who could run for office, though there had been rumblings. He had just been in a Terminator movie; he didn’t need such a low-paying fallback career. So we didn’t think about him very seriously. But then he went on The Tonight Show, and suddenly he was—the recall was, and then he was.”

“He was an action hero, painted in broad strokes, who ran on a name and a catchphrase. And the shock was the same as it is now.”