The depth of Georgia Republican Senate candidate and Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker’s ignorance never ceases to amaze. On Sunday, Walker spoke in front of the Hall County Republican Party. The group was small and the speech revolved mainly around the enemy: China. That’s the country he claims created the COVID-19 virus and is to blame for climate change and a tax increase used to clean up the air.
Walker’s stump speech was filled with the usual GOP rhetoric: his support of the police, why “left” leaders are weak, accusing the Democrats of taking away religious freedom, and complaining about high gas and food prices. But he seemed to go way off-script when he started talking about the environment and climate change and how “[President Joe] Biden” began “getting rid of pipelines,” and “getting rid of our energy.”
Then Walker explained climate change and the “Green New Deal” by saying that “We, in America, have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water of anybody in the world.”
RELATED STORY: Herschel Walker is not an ethical person and he shouldn’t be running for Senate
However, Walker pivoted to describe how the U.S. is going to “pull from the ‘Green New Deal’… millions or billions of dollars cleaning our good air up,” and added that, “China and India aren’t putting anything into cleaning that situation up.”
“So all that bad air is still there. But, since we don’t control the air, our good air decide to float over to China bad air. So when China get our good air, their bad air gotta move. So, it moves over to our good air space. And now, we gotta clean that back up. While they’re messing ours up. So, what we’re doing is just spending money. But we’re not just spending money, we’re spending your money,” Walker says. And that is why Biden is raising taxes, he reasons.
Campaign Action
In this case, it’s unclear if Walker simply doesn’t understand the Green New Deal, or is twisting the idea of an unclean planet and blaming it on the usual GOP boogeyman—China—which surely stems from his extensive GOP coaching.
For the record, Investopedia defines the Green New Deal as “various sets of policies that aim to make systemic change.” It was introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey in Congress in 2019. The goals, as explained by Vox, are to achieve “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, creating jobs, providing for a just transition, securing clean air and water,” with projects such as “decarbonizing electricity, transportation, and industry, restoring ecosystems, upgrading buildings and electricity grids.”
As we’ve reported at Daily Kos, Walker’s lies are ubiquitous.
Last week, Daily Kos reported on another of Walker’s blunders: lying to his own campaign aides about three children he’d apparently been keeping a secret.
CNN exclusively reported Friday that Walker was at one time a “partner” and “spokesman” for a subsidiary of Just Energy, a company that’s been investigated by states’ attorneys general and utility agencies amid years of deceptive practices.
The list of Walker’s deceptions is long and varied. It includes lying about graduating from the University of Georgia, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, to mammoth exaggerations about his business acumen, to the tall tale about the time he founded (or co-founded) the organization Patriot Support—which he did not. He even recently tried to deny that former President Donald Trump ever said that the 2020 election was stolen.
To watch Walker’s full speech:
How to elect more Black women, with Ruby Powell-Dennis on Daily Kos Elections’ The Downballot podcast to talk about what moves Democrats can make
