I fucking love it when he’s back on the campaign trail:
In his second rally for Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) this election cycle, former president Barack Obama again laid into Herschel Walker's qualifications, mining some of the Republican candidate's more recent eyebrow-raising comments.
Why it matters: Obama's attacks align with Warnock's own runoff closing argument, which has featured direct attacks Walker's competence and character.
- A recent Warnock ad features a split screen in which voters react to videos of Walker going off-script on the stump.
What he's saying: "Since the last time I was here Mr. Walker has been talking about issues that are of great importance to the people of Georgia. Like whether it's better to be a vampire or a werewolf," Obama told thousands in Atlanta on Thursday.
- "This is a debate that I must confess I once had myself. When I was seven. Then I grew up," he continued.
- "As far as I'm concerned he can be anything he wants to be, except for a United States Senator," Obama said. "This would be funny if he weren't running for Senate."
There’s more:
"Since the last time I was here, apparently, he also claimed that he used to let me beat him at basketball," Obama said to an audience in Atlanta, according to a clip of his speech. "But then he admitted that we have never actually met. So I guess this was more of an imaginary whooping that I laid on him."
The audience met him with laughter.
On at least three occasions between 2017 and 2020, Walker claimed to have played basketball with Obama, adding that he let him win, HuffPost reported. But on a Fox News radio show, the GOP candidate said he never actually met the former president.
But it wasn’t all jabs at Walker in Obama’ speech tonight:
A fired up Barack Obama returned to Georgia on Thursday imploring voters to go out and vote “one more time” and send Raphael Warnock back to the U.S. Senate.
The former president spoke to a boisterous crowd of several thousand people ahead of Tuesday’s runoff, which will determine whether Warnock or his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, go to Washington. In an exceedingly close general election race, neither earned the 50% needed to win outright, forcing them to battle into overtime.
“I’m here to tell you, we can’t let up. I’m here to tell you, we can’t tune out. We can’t get complacent. We have to run through the tape,” Obama said. “And I know you can do it because you did it before.”
Obama ticked through the accomplishments — infrastructure spending, cuts to prescription drug prices and gun control legislation — that were possible because Warnock and fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff were elected in the state’s 2021 Senate runoffs.
A Warnock win would give Democrats 51 seats in the Senate, instead of 50. That, said Obama, would mean preventing one person from holding up votes in the chamber and prevent someone who “chases wacky conspiracy theories” from amassing power.
But Georgia Republicans only have one person to blame for Walker:
Donald Trump saddled Republicans with a clearly flawed Herschel Walker as their Senate nominee in Georgia, but in the final weeks before the runoff election, the ex-president has not spent a single dime to help Walker — despite the nearly $100 million of donor money he is sitting on.
Some 100 groups have poured $69 million into the Dec. 6 runoff between Walker and Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, according to a HuffPost analysis of Federal Election Commission filings through Thursday.
Ten have spent at least seven figures, led by the pro-Warnock Georgia Honor super PAC with $19.4 million and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund with $15.3 million.
But groups controlled by the coup-attempting former president, who cajoled Walker to get into the race in the first place, essentially clearing the field for the former football star, have not reported spending anything at all — that despite Trump likely having $94 million on hand between his Save America “leadership” PAC and his Make America Great Again Inc. super PAC.
“He’s not going to spend it. He doesn’t care,” said Martha Zoller, a former adviser to Georgia’s popular GOP Gov. Brian Kemp. “People are really resentful of how Trump has handled all of this.”
You can rewatch the whole event here:
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