Ruh roh Herschel, now you’re in the shit. After telling the world you’d support a federal abortion ban, it turns out that you paid for your girlfriend to have one. Sen. Mitch McConnell, you better come help your man.
Monday night, The Daily Beast dropped a bomb: Reporter Roger Sollenberger wrote that in 2009, Georgia’s Republican Senate candidate paid a girlfriend to get an abortion—and said girlfriend has the receipts (and a “get well” card) to prove it.
According to the outlet, Walker, who is supposedly a devout pro-life Christian, sent the unnamed woman a check for $700 to cover the cost of her abortion. She provided The Daily Beast with a receipt for $575 from the abortion clinic and a copy of the bank deposit slip for the check Walker sent her. The $125 difference came after the woman said she “ball-parked” the amount for the abortion and included payment for her travel and recovery costs. The check came in a “get well” card, and the woman gave the outlet a photo of the card that included Walker’s signature at the bottom.
RELATED STORY: As midterms loom, Herschel Walker's hometown voters say he's 'not part of the Black community'
Tuesday, Oct 4, 2022 · 6:39:24 PM +00:00 · Rebekah Sager
Of course, former President Donald Trump was not swayed in his support of Walker after discovering that he paid an ex-girlfriend to have an abortion.
Trump posted this on his Truth Social after the story about Walker broke.
The Daily Beast reports that they did their due diligence and corroborated the story with the woman’s friend at the time, who also cared for her after the procedure.
Walker vehemently denied the story. And even made an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity to prove it.
When asked about the “serious accusations” and if he knew the woman, Walker replied with, “I have no idea,” and called the report a “flat-out lie.” He then said, “they were making up lies … to take this seat.” Then he asked for some money for his campaign.
When asked about his signature on the card, Walker denied ever seeing it, even after the photo was displayed on the screen. He said he sends out lots of cards, adding, “But I can tell you right now, I never asked anybody to get an abortion, I never paid for an abortion, and it’s a lie [...] And I will continue to fight.”
Walker, 60, claimed the story “energized him.”
When asked about the $700 check, he said he gives money to people all the time and then quoted a few Bible verses.
Not long after the report was released, Walker's son, Christian Walker, went to Twitter to drag his father.
“I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us.
“You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence,” he wrote on Twitter.
The 23-year-old added:
“I don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.’ You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you.”
Walker responded on Twitter by saying, “I LOVE my son no matter what.”
Christian Walker tweeted: “I’ve stayed silent for nearly two years as my whole life has been lied about publicly. I did ONE campaign event, then said I didn’t want involvement. Don’t you dare test my authenticity. Here is the full story:”
Walker released a statement on Twitter after the story was published, threatening to sue The Daily Beast.
"I'm not taking this anymore. I planning [sic] to sue the Daily Beast for this defamatory lie. It will be filed tomorrow morning," he wrote.
Tuesday morning, CBS News’ Elizabeth Campbell Tweeted that Walker’s attorneys were walking back the possibility of a suit.
“We are currently considering our options, but no final decision has been made on the future handling of this matter,” the attorneys said, according to Campbell’s tweet.
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Walker’s latest gaffe is just another in a long string of lies and overstatements.
Since Daily Kos began reporting on Walker after he announced his candidacy, we’ve covered lie upon lie about everything from graduating from the University of Georgia, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, to hiding the fact that he had any children other than his one 22-year-old son Christian, to the mammoth exaggerations about his business acumen, to the tall tale about the time he founded (or co-founded) the veterans’ organization Patriot Support—which he did not. He recently tried to deny that former President Donald Trump ever said the 2020 election was stolen, and the latest discovery deals with lies about his companies’ alleged charitable donations, nearly none of which were able to be verified by The Washington Post.
A recent story from The New York Times reported on the Black voters in Walker’s hometown in Wrightsville, Georgia, most of whom said they would not be voting for the Heisman Trophy winner in November.
“Herschel’s not getting the Black vote because Herschel forgot where he came from,” Curtis Dixon, who is Black and who taught and coached Walker during his high school years in the late 1970s, told the Times. “He’s not part of the Black community.”
Walker is running against the incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
As for Walker’s chances in the midterms, conservative commentator Erick Erickson tweeted it was “probably a KO.”
Nicole Rodden, a GOP House contender, lashed out at Republican leadership, telling The Atlanta Journal Constitution that supporting Walker has “cost the GOP the U.S. Senate for a second time.”
Abortion rights, climate change, and gun safety are all on the ballot this fall, and there are literally thousands of ways to get involved in turning our voters. Plug into a federal, state, or local campaign from our GOTV feed at Mobilize and help Democrats and progressives win in November.
Since Dobbs, women have registered to vote in unprecedented numbers across the country, and the first person to dig into these stunning trends was TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier, who's our guest on this episode of The Downballot. Bonier explains how his firm gathers data on the electorate; why this surge is likely a leading indicator showing stepped-up enthusiasm among many groups of voters, including women, young people, and people of color; how we know these new registrants disproportionately lean toward Democrats; and what it all might mean for November.