It’s more or less an article of faith among MAGA diehards that the deep state and its handmaidens in the media, Democratic Party and elsewhere didn’t let Donald Trump do his job. Most of us know, however, that Trump never began to understand what his job was, let alone do it. Based on the people he has picked for his return to the White House, he still doesn’t.
As much ink has been spilled about the likes of RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and Matt Gaetz, there’s one pick who hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. Just before Christmas, Trump named longtime friend, former NFL player, and 1982 Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker as ambassador to the Bahamas. Incredibly, we haven’t had a full-time ambassador in that island country since 2011. However, as I note at my Substack, Walker is among the last people who should be anywhere near an ambassadorship. Anyone paying attention during his 2022 run for a Senate seat in Georgia would know this—unless they have a MAGA hat glued to their head.
Those of us who followed that race know that Walker piled up two things by the barrelful—gaffes and lies. He opposed the Green New Deal because—wait for it—so much “bad air” from other countries would come here that it wouldn’t be worth the effort. He believes that there are 52 states. When asked to give his thoughts on the Uvalde school shooting, he responded with word salad.
He claimed to be an FBI agent even though he didn't have a bachelor’s degree. He long claimed to have graduated near the top of his class at Georgia, even though he didn’t finish his degree until 42 years after he left early for the United States Football League. Even his own campaign staffers knew he was a liar.
Part of the problem, I suspect, can be traced to taking a nasty amount of hits over years of playing in junior high and high school, as well as in college, the USFL, and the NFL. Most knowledgeable football fans know that as late as his days in the USFL, protective equipment was inferior. Well into his NFL days, concussions and head injuries were brushed off as part of the game.
Indeed, I see a lot of parallels between Walker and another college star of his era, Art Schlichter. Most football junkies know Schlichter’s pro career imploded due to his compulsive gambling. That problem has landed Schlichter behind bars numerous times since 1987—including for all but 358 days from 1994 to 2006. His most recent long-term stint in prison came in 2011, when he was sentenced to 10 years on federal and state charges of theft and fraud. Schlichter’s public defender in that case revealed that he has “deficits” in his frontal lobes, which control impulse and judgment. He has since been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and dementia, and the co-author of his 2011 biography is all but certain that he has chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative condition caused by repeated blows to the head. That condition can only be definitively diagnosed in dead people, but has run rampant among football players of Schlichter and Walker’s era.
To my mind, Walker shouldn’t have been running for Senate in 2022, and he shouldn’t be up for an ambassadorship now. He should be getting help. But one issue can’t be chalked up to the punishment he took in his playing days. A month before the 2022 election, Walker’s son, Christian, revealed that he and his mother suffered horrific abuse at Walker’s hands for years; they even had to move six times in six months to get away from him. It still burns my bacon that a lot of people, including Black conservatives, didn’t consider this disqualifying. All that mattered was dumping Sen. Raphael Warnock in favor of Walker. They basically gave Christian, a man who was young enough to be their son, the finger.
As far as I’m concerned, Trump gave the finger to Christian again by nominating his father as ambassador. To my mind, it says a lot about how twisted our politics have become that a clearly unstable man with a history of violent behavior can even be considered for such a high post.
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