Of course he would:
On Saturday, a 22-year-old man with a history of domestic violence killed five people and injured 22 others with an AR-15 at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Some people were at the venue, Club Q, to mark the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a commemoration of people killed in anti-trans violence. One of the victims, bartender Daniel Aston, was transgender.
Some gun-loving Republicans offered their typical thoughts and prayers after the 34th mass shooting in the U.S. this year; others just carried on with the kind of homophobic rhetoric that fuels hate crimes like this. Herschel Walker, who’s currently campaigning for a December 6 runoff election in Georgia against incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D), went ahead with his wildly bigoted stump speech on Sunday in Carrollton, without acknowledging the shooting at all.
Here’s what Walker told voters yesterday, according to audio obtained by Jezebel:
“Do y’all know what the definition of an enemy is? A enemy is somebody that don’t like you. But they been telling you they don’t know the definition of a woman either. So think about that either. They don’t know the definition of a woman. But I’m going to tell you the definition of a woman. Because it written in my great book. It said ‘a man and a woman.’ And there’s a difference between the two of them. So that’s the reason men shouldn’t be in women’s sport—here’s a difference.
But then, yet, they trying to tell you a man could get pregnant. Get that out of your head. No, he can’t. No, he can’t. All they’re trying to do is take you down in that elevator, take you down in that elevator and lie to you. But I’m going to tell you right now, I’m not going to lie to you. I’m going to tell you, we’re in a mess. We’re in a mess because we put weak leaders in Washington. Weak leaders in Washington that not representing us.”
The candidate also railed against honoring people’s correct pronouns in the military, a frequent line of his:
“I’m going to tell you this, if we don’t support our military, we will have no strength. And I can guarantee we’ll have no peace. Because that what is happening right now. They have talked about Senator Warnock not talked about bringing pronouns into our military. Pronouns. What the heck is a pronoun? I can tell you right now, grenades don’t know nothing about no pronouns. Bullets don’t know what color your skin is. But yet they talking about pronouns. I’m still doing pushups and sit ups. That’s what we need to have them doing. Pushups and sit ups, not pronouns.”
And it gets worse:
Georgia GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker debuted a new ad on Monday, targeting voters before the state’s Dec. 6 runoff election. In it, former college athlete Riley Gaines complains about having to compete against swimmer Lia Thomas in the NCAA national championship, where the two tied for fifth place. Gaines describes Thomas, a trans woman, as “a biological male,” and criticizes Walker’s opponent, Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.), as having “voted to let” Thomas’s participation “happen.”
This is not a new message from the GOP’s Walker, nor is Gaines’s endorsement. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution covered Walker’s anti-trans message in September, something that the paper explained was seen by Walker’s campaign as “a way to energize socially conservative voters — particularly women — who are uniquely motivated by the issue.” (The crowd at one rally at which Gaines made an appearance responded positively to Walker’s rhetoric, the paper reported, which included telling children that “Jesus may not recognize you” if you’re trans, blocking your entrance to Heaven.) The claim about Warnock’s vote, incidentally, is also misleading.
It’s the timing of the Walker ad that’s remarkable. On Saturday night, a shooter killed five people — including a trans man — and injured 18 others in an attack at a gay club in Colorado Springs. The accused shooter has been charged with five hate-crime counts. But here’s Walker apparently again seeing anti-trans rhetoric as an issue that will energize voters, despite his deployment of anti-trans rhetoric having left him in second place in the first round of voting earlier this month.
Friendly reminder, here’s the right way to respond to a tragedy:
Also, FYI: