Herschel Walker (R. TX) hugging his friend, the 2020 Loser.
This is pathetic:
GOP Senate nominee Herschel Walker tiptoed to explain why former President Donald Trump is not holding an in-person rally for him just days before Walker’s runoff election against Democrat Raphael Warnock in Georgia.
Trump lives in Florida, one state away, and has backed the ex-football star’s candidacy. On Tuesday, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham asked Walker why Trump wouldn’t stump for him while former President Barack Obama was campaigning for Warnock in the state.
Walker struggled to cobble together a firm response.
“You know, President Trump has always been in my corner ― he still is in my corner, and he’s been doing other things for me, and everyone has been doing a lot of things for me,” Walker said. “Tonight we just got out of a fundraiser with Governor [Brian] Kemp ... President Trump is doing just as much for me.”
And when Walker was asked about Obama coming to Atlanta to campaign for Senator Warnock, here’s his response:
And I think right now, the left is trying to highlight with President Obama coming down. But, you know, one of the things that they gotta remember: President Obama is a celebrity, and that seems to be where Raphael Warnock is getting his money from. Celebrities. But he's not gonna win this race. I told people before. He may outraise me in money, but he, I guarantee he won't get more votes than I'm gonna get.
Speaking of Obama:
FYI:
Click here to RSVP.
Here’s the deal with Trump:
Instead of holding one of his signature campaign rallies, Mr. Trump is planning a call with supporters in the state and will continue sending online fund-raising pleas for Mr. Walker, two people with knowledge of the planning said.
The decision to keep Mr. Trump out of the spotlight was a response largely to the former president’s political style and image, which can energize his core supporters but also motivate Democratic voters and turn off significant segments of moderate Republicans.
In Georgia, that political math has become a net deficit for Mr. Trump, who opened his 2024 presidential campaign two weeks ago. In 2020, he was the first Republican presidential candidate to lose the state in 28 years. Earlier this year, his handpicked primary challengers to Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger were both trounced.
Mr. Trump also appeared to be a factor in the state’s general election in November. Roughly one in three Georgia Republicans who voted said they were not supporters of Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. Mr. Kemp won 90 percent of those voters while winning re-election by 7.5 points, according to the AP VoteCast survey of 2022 voters.
But he’ll be with Walker in spirit to a degree:
Former President Donald Trump will hold a tele-rally with Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker, but GOP sources confirm to Fox News Digital the former president will not hold an in-person rally in Georgia ahead of the Dec. 6 runoff.
Despite Walker being a major Trump surrogate during the 2020 presidential campaign, sources close to the Walker and Trump campaigns say both sides understand that an in-person appearance from the former president in Georgia ahead of the runoff election against incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock carried more political risks than rewards.
Trump held in-person rallies in Georgia for Walker in September 2021 and March of this year, but hasn’t returned to the Peach State to campaign in-person since Walker won the Republican Senate primary in May.
The decision comes just days after Trump was seen having dinner with a white nationalist.
Over the weekend, Trump hosted white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who has been made antisemitic and racist remarks, and well-known rapper Ye — formerly known as Kanye West — at a dinner in Mar-a-Lago.
While we’re on the topic of racism, David Corn at Mother Jones has another great piece out today about Walker:
In July 2020, a year before he would announce his Senate bid, Walker appeared on the podcast of David Harris Jr., a Black conservative, and discussed assorted matters relating to race. Referring to his son, Walker noted that he was “afraid if the police stop him because he’s Black.” Moreover, Walker recalled his own troubling encounters with law enforcement officers: “I’ve been stopped by the police. I’ve been harassed by the police before.” Discussing one incident when he was pulled over by cops, he said, “Why in the world are you gonna stop me? Because I’m Black and drive an SUV? And then they saw my name and they said, ‘Oh well, I’m sorry.’ And I said, ‘I know what it was.'”
Walker told Harris he was upset by this episode: “Was I hurt? Yes? Was I mad? Yes.” He characterized the event as racial profiling. Though he was not yet a Senate candidate, he said that he wanted to “change that mentality [of the police] by going to Washington and getting more money into training police officers.” The goal was to address racism: “Put the programs in place so that [the police] can see that all Black men are not monsters. All Black men, when you meet them, are not monsters. All Hispanic kids are not monsters. That we’re not all criminals.”
During this interview Walker also expressed his support for Donald Trump—who became an owner of the New Jersey Generals football team shortly after it signed Walker in 1983—and denied Trump was a racist. He acknowledged the existence of racism while downplaying its significance within American society: “I know that things are not better, but they’re better than they were yesterday.” Walker put forward a narrow definition of racism that seemed pegged to the civil rights protests of the 1960s: “Racism is when you have the dogs that’s gonna attack you. Racism is when you have these police officers with billy clubs coming to hit you in the head because you’re in the wrong place.”
It can sometimes be difficult to figure out what Walker is saying. Talking with Harris about his opposition to Black Lives Matter, he said, “That’s what’s so great about America, United States of America, we can say no. You remember that Nike slogan: ‘Just say no’? Now you can’t just say no because you’ll get in trouble. But you can’t say no because—oh jeez—you’re racist, or you’re an Uncle Tom… Guys, I’m as Black as you can be.” (The Nike slogan is “Just Do It.”) All in all, in this interview Walker presented a convoluted picture. He had been a victim of police racism and he was worried his son would be. This was a recognition that racism did exist. Yet Walker downplayed criticisms of American racism.
A few weeks earlier, on a different podcast, Walker had also dismissed criticisms of racism: “In Washington, all you hear is the word ‘racist.’ ‘You’re a racist.’.. They use that word like it’s just easy… Racism is something when people are harmed. That’s what racism is, when people are harmed, people are shot… That is what racism is. Racism is not, I don’t like your beliefs.'”
As a Senate candidate, Walker has fully embraced and advanced racism denialism. In a campaign speech in September 2021, Walker said, “Don’t let the Left try to fool you with this racism thing. This country isn’t racist.” The next month, on the UFC Unfiltered podcast, Walker declared, “We don’t have racism” in the United States. He said he was running for Senate to counter “all this [talk of] racism, this woke theory. This is the greatest country in the world.” At a campaign event in May, Walker appeared to suggest racism wasn’t real. “Where is this racism thing coming from?” he asked, asserting that the charge of racism was deployed only to censor people.
Walker already has enough problems heading into the runoff:
In a campaign speech earlier this year, Herschel Walker, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Georgia, said: “I live in Texas.”
Walker will face the Democratic incumbent, Raphael Warnock, in a runoff next Tuesday, a contest triggered after Warnock received the most votes on election day but did not pass 50% of the vote. Polling puts the two candidates near-level, with early voting at record levels.
Control of the Senate has already been decided but victory in Georgia would give Democrats outright control by 51-49.
Endorsed by Donald Trump, Walker has ridden controversies over his business record, alleged encouragement of abortions, family relationships, and more.
A football star for the University of Georgia, he went on to star for the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL. Earlier this month, CNN reported that he was benefiting from a tax break on a Dallas home described as his principal residence.
On Tuesday, CNN returned to the well, reporting that in January, while discussing immigration policy in a speech to Republicans at the University of Georgia, Walker said: “I live in Texas … I went down to the border off and on sometimes.”
Walker also said: “Everyone asks me, why did I decide to run for a Senate seat? Because to be honest with you, this is never something I ever, ever, ever thought in my life I’d ever do. And that’s the honest truth.
“As I was sitting in my home in Texas, I was sitting in my home in Texas, and I was seeing what was going on in this country. I was seeing what was going on in this country with how they were trying to divide people.”
CNN also said Walker gave at least four interviews about his Georgia run from his Texas home.
And Walker certainly has a lot of factors working against him:
When Democrats clinched the 50th seat in the U.S. Senate, it deprived Walker of one of his core arguments to skeptical conservatives: that a vote for the Republican was a vote for a GOP-controlled chamber.
Newly emerged tax records that show Walker considers his home in Texas a primary residence led to fresh attacks framing the former Dallas Cowboys star as an out-of-state carpetbagger.
A failed GOP push to block Saturday voting in the runoff appears to have galvanized Democrats, leading to a weekend surge and record-breaking early voting turnout on Monday and Tuesday. Black voters, the cornerstone of the Democratic electorate, make up a disproportionately high share of early voters.
And Warnock’s huge fundraising advantage — he raised $52 million in a roughly three-week span — enabled him to test a variety of ways to connect with hard-to-reach voters while also hammering Walker with more traditional attacks.
One of his closing ads features a split-screen shot of voters reacting to Walker’s bizarre statements on the stump about werewolves and “bad air.” In the ad, one disgusted viewer harrumphs: “Let’s call it what it is. It is embarrassing.”
Ben Burnett, a GOP commentator and former Alpharetta city councilman, said Walker may have been lulled into a sense of complacency after a GOP primary he compared to a “homecoming queen race” because it hinged on Walker’s popularity as a football icon.
Burnett noted that Walker lost four reliably Republican precincts in Alpharetta that Kemp won. It was no anomaly. Walker significantly lagged behind Kemp elsewhere in the Atlanta suburbs — along with a ribbon of deeply conservative counties along Georgia’s northern boundaries.
“Herschel Walker can’t find a closing message because he doesn’t have the capacity,” Burnett said. “The Georgia Republican primary voter is to blame. We nominated the only guy who could possibly lose this race. I don’t fault Herschel for being who he is. Or, in this case, who he isn’t.”
But Senator Warnock is not taking this runoff for granted:
Personal controversies and scandals have dogged Walker from the beginning of his Senate bid. Warnock did not directly make an issue of them for much of the 2022 campaign because he did not need to. Outside groups—both Democratic and GOP—hammered Walker with TV ads on his past allegations of domestic abuse during the primary and general election.
In October, reporting from The Daily Beast revealing that Walker, an anti-abortion hardliner, had paid for a girlfriend to obtain an abortion became a central focus in the race. Warnock largely declined to engage with the story. As one Democrat put it to The Daily Beast at the time, there wasn’t much he could add to what Walker’s own son, Christian, was publicly saying about the Republican’s failures as a father and as a family man.
But with polls tightening in the final month of the race, Warnock got more aggressive. There was a noted uptick in his tweets focusing on Walker’s character and integrity after their head-to-head debate on Oct. 14, in which the moderators effectively gave Walker a pass on the abortion revelations and Warnock declined to press the issue himself.
While Warnock never mentioned specific Walker stories, they were so thoroughly in the public bloodstream that voters likely knew what the senator meant with tweets, like one from Oct. 19, saying that Walker’s “pattern of lies and disturbing behavior proves he is not ready to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate.”
Two days before the election, Warnock amped up the rhetoric, tweeting, “we’ve watched Herschel Walker double down on his lies in the face of all evidence and we’ve seen this pattern of lying, but also violence.”
That focus has only continued in the runoff campaign, as Warnock seeks to make the contest a referendum on what he calls “competence and character”—both his own and Walker’s. To observers of the campaign, it’s been a natural evolution of strategy.
"He did it exactly on the timeline that makes sense,” said one Democratic aide. “He didn’t have to hammer the personal stuff earlier because it was coming out on its own accord.”
And Democrats are pushing hard to seal the deal for Warnock:
The Democratic group Georgia Honor launched a $5.83 million TV ad buy on Tuesday for the last week before the Senate runoff designed to sink Republican candidate Herschel Walker, who is trying to unseat Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.
The new blitz yields a total of $23.5 million in runoff spending on TV and digital ads by the group, which is affiliated with Democratic super-PAC Senate Majority PAC. It begins Tuesday and goes through Dec. 6, the day of the election.
The buy features a 30-second spot, called “Hurt So Many,” that goes after the Republican candidate’s character. It features footage of Walker’s ex-wife saying Walker “held the gun to my temple and said he was gonna blow my brains out,” along with his son Christian saying the candidate “threatened to kill us.” It ends with a female accuser who dated Walker claiming on television that Walker used threats to pressure her to have an abortion. He has denied that.
Group spokeswoman Veronica Yoo said the goal of the final push is to “ensure that voters continue to see and hear the truth about Herschel Walker’s publicly documented pattern of lies, violence against women, and disturbing conduct.”
The new investment continues a pattern of Democrats significantly outspending Republicans in the runoff, and jumping into the ad wars before GOP counterpart Senate Leadership Fund.
Also, Warnock is reaching out to every demographic that can help him win:
Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-Ga.) campaign is releasing a trio of digital ads in Vietnamese, Mandarin and Korean in an effort to mobilize Asian Americans and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters one week out from Georgia’s Senate runoff race.
The ads — which were first shared with The Hill — feature voters explaining why they are voting for Warnock over Republican Herschel Walker in the three languages. The spots, titled “Proud,” include translations.
“I’m proud to call Georgia home, but I’d be embarrassed to call Herschel Walker my senator,” the voters say in the ads. “So I’m doing my part and voting for Reverend Warnock in the runoff on Dec. 6. I hope you’ll join me.”
The digital ads range from 18 seconds long to 24 seconds long and will run throughout Georgia on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram and as pre-roll video.
The Warnock campaign is zeroing in on AAPI voters after data showed that Asian American voters surged in Georgia between 2016 and 2020. According to AAPIData.com, the demographic grew by 84 percent — or 61,000 votes — in the Peach State within that time frame.
Additionally, exit polls from this month’s midterm elections found that Asian Americans broke for Democrats over Republicans. NBC News reported that 58 percent of Asian Americans voted for Democrats while 40 percent supported Republicans, according to its exit poll.
Click here to sign up to volunteer for Warnock’s campaign.
Click here to find your polling place.
Boosting turnout in this runoff is important and we have to pull it off for the sake of having a Democratic Senate Majority to save Democracy. Click below to get involved with Warnock’s campaign and these grassroots organizations GOTV efforts:
Georgia
Click here to check your registration status and find your polling spot.
