You're surely at least acquainted with the Herschel Walker situation. Just to make sure the table is set, here's the basic story:
After a woman revealed that Republican senatorial candidate Herschel Walker had urged her to have an abortion, Walker adamantly denied the story and claimed he had no idea who this woman could be.
But there’s a good reason the woman finds that defense highly doubtful: She’s the mother of one of his children.
When the woman first told The Daily Beast her story, we agreed not to reveal certain details about her identity over her concerns for safety and privacy. But then Walker categorically denied the story and said he didn’t know who was making this allegation.
On Wednesday morning, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade asked Walker whether he had figured out the woman’s identity, based on details in the original report.
“Not at all,” Walker replied. “And that’s what I hope everyone can see. It’s sort of like everyone is anonymous, or everyone is leaking, and they want you to confess to something you have no clue about.”
He's claiming he doesn't know her from Adam, but along with the child he convinced her to snuff, they have a kid who has since grown to adulthood.
The mom says Walker talked like a Christian when it was advantageous:
Asked about the role faith played in Walker’s life, the anonymous woman, who identifies as a Christian herself, said even though Walker often talked about Christianity, he uses it “when it works for him.”
She said Walker frequently talked about being a Christian, but never once expressed any misgivings about abortion generally—or any regret about the one that they had. When she got pregnant again years later, the woman says she made a different choice, even though Walker said it still wasn’t “a convenient time” for him.
“He didn’t express any regret. He said, ‘relax and recover,’” the woman recalled, alluding to the message on the “get well” card Walker sent her along with the abortion payment.
“He seemed pretty pro-choice to me. He was pro-choice, obviously,” she said.
“I don’t think there’s anywhere in the Bible where it says ‘Have four kids with four different women while you’re with another woman.’ Or where it praises not being a present parent. Or that an abortion is an OK thing to do when it’s not the right time for you, but a terrible thing for anyone else to do when you are running for Senate. He picks and chooses where it’s convenient for him to use that religious crutch,” she said.
Another Walker son spills some beans about what kind of dad the candidate wasn't"
After Walker denied the report, one of his three sons, conservative social media influencer Christian Walker, released a series of angry statements and videos condemning his dad as a liar, and alleging that the University of Georgia football hero had threatened to murder him and his mother—Walker’s ex-wife.
“I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us,” Christian Walker tweeted after the abortion story broke Monday night. “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.”
A clip from Dana Loesch's podcast is also getting widely disseminated. The link is in the excerpt below, if you're up for getting thoroughly disgusted:
. . . many Republican backers and media personalities—including Walker himself—have seized on the woman’s anonymity to dismiss the report. On Tuesday, former National Rifle Association spokesperson Dana Loesch called her “one broad” and a “skank.”
Dana's one of those media righties whose on-air persona should have provided clues as to how the Trump phenomenon would affect her. Before the Very Stable Genius came on the scene, she was already honing the "I'm-a-gal-from-the-hills-of-southern-Missouri-who's-handy-with-all-kinds-of-firearms-and-I-don't-take-any-s--- -from anybody" image that became her stock in trade. Her contribution of an essay to National Review's 2016 Against Trump issue was seen, by me, at least, as a surprise. Rowdy radio personalities didn't - and still don't - generally find the VSG objectionable.
But in this era in which the head of their cult is out of office, Trumpists and Neo-Trumpists are leaning heavy into this drag-the-brand-across-the-finish-line mentality. That's how they justified their enthusiasm for Trump, taking the I-don't-care-how-dastardly-he's-been-in-his-personal-life stance, because they thought their policy aims required a desperate clinging-to.
The vomit-inducing Kurt Schlichter has a column at Townhall today expressing much the same point, saying, in essence, "So the Left thinks it bothers me that it's calling me a hypocrite? Don't flatter yourselves." Sorry, no linky-love. You're a busy person anyway; you don't have time for such garbage. Trust me, it's the usual hell-yeah-I'm-proud-of-my-positions bluster.
But what of Walker's opponent in the Georgia Senate race, the incumbent, Raphael Warnock?
He's a leftist in good standing, checking all the correct identity-politics-militancy boxes, which wouldn't qualify him as much more than a garden-variety modern Democrat, except that when he played the race card in the case of his half-brother, it required him to omit some inconvenient facts that eventually came to light:
When he talks about racism in the U.S. justice system, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) often cites the case of his older brother—a "first-time," "nonviolent" drug offender who was sentenced to life in prison due to a "pandemic of racism," according to the senator.
Warnock has compared his half-brother, whose full name is Keith Coleman, to black victims of police shootings, attributed his imprisonment to the "stigma of color and criminality," and praised his early release in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic as a day of "hope" for the justice system.
But hundreds of pages of court records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon tell a more complicated story: Coleman was a cop with the Savannah Police Department when he was convicted of facilitating a cross-country cocaine trafficking operation in 1996 and 1997—and once warned that he could send a drug dealer’s "black ass" to prison if the dealer didn’t pay Coleman more money.
The details conflict with Warnock’s accounts, which omit that Coleman was a police officer and portray him as a victim of law enforcement corruption rather than a participant in it.
"[My brother] was a first-time offender, convicted of a nonviolent drug-related offense, in which no one got hurt, no one died, no one even got high because the federal government basically created the sting operation," said Warnock in a June 2020 speech to the American Jewish Archives.
Here are the details of how Coleman came to have a run-in with the law:
In November 1995, the FBI launched an undercover sting campaign called "Operation Broken Oath" to investigate whistleblower tips about dirty cops within the Savannah Police Department, according to a pretrial investigative report by the bureau. The probe ensnared nearly a dozen police officers who agreed to provide paid security for undercover FBI agents and informants posing as cocaine traffickers.
One of these officers was Coleman, who quickly became a ringleader in the illegal scheme, using his police-issued handgun and car to escort the purported drug dealers as they drove kilos of cocaine to airports, hotels, and warehouses, according to prosecutors.
Coleman "continued to push for more work and more money." He demanded higher payments after an undercover agent posing as a drug dealer offered him $1,500 for one cocaine-trafficking job.
"If I knowed I was fucking with a motherfucker off the corner who can't afford [to pay me] no more than $1,500, his black ass would be in prison," said Coleman, according to an audio recording cited in the court records.
Coleman later demanded that the purported drug traffickers place the payments in envelopes instead of handing him stacks of cash, arguing that this was a better way to avoid detection.
"No counting by the car," he told them. "[Some witness] might want to mail some shit to 60 Minutes. … ‘I saw police taking some money by a car. Why would he be doing that?’"
Prosecutors allege Coleman received $46,000 in dirty payments and helped traffic a total of 28.2 kilograms of cocaine between November 1996 and March 1997.
On Nov. 21, 1997, Coleman was convicted by a jury of conspiring and attempting to aid and abet the distribution of cocaine, and with carrying a firearm during a drug trafficking offense. He was sentenced to life in prison, and two of his co-conspirators were sentenced to 17 years and 19 years, respectively.
Court records cited Coleman’s possession of a weapon, his abuse of power as a police officer, and his recruitment of other cops as justification for a longer sentence.
And with regard to Warnock's short-lived marriage, most media coverage tends to focus on the fact that his wife's foot showed no signs of injury during the row in which she claims he ran over it with his car.
But that's not all there is to that story:
Georgia Democratic senator Raphael Warnock has been ordered to attend mediation for a custody dispute with his ex-wife, after she accused him of neglecting visitation with their two young children and failing to pay childcare expenses.
Fulton County Superior Court judge Shermela J. Williams said on Friday that there were "numerous unresolved issues" between Warnock and his ex-wife Oulèye Ndoye, and ordered the couple to try to reach a mediated settlement by May 7. A status hearing in the case was also scheduled for May 16, with both Warnock and Ndoye required to attend, according to a notice from the judge on Monday.
Williams did not rule on Ndoye's request that Warnock be held in contempt of court for failing to abide by the original custody agreement.
The allegations against Warnock could undercut his campaign branding as an advocate for women, children, and low-income families. But if the mediation is successful, it could allow Warnock to settle the feud outside of court—and away from the public spotlight—as he mounts a reelection campaign for one of the most hotly contested seats in the midterm elections.
In a court filing in February, Ndoye accused Warnock of leaving her "financially strapped" by refusing to reimburse her for childcare expenses. She said Warnock also "routinely neglects" to give her notice when he is traveling out of town during his visitation days, and instead has the children "picked up from school by friends and [leaves] them with various babysitters overnight" while he is away.
Ndoye claimed Warnock also refused to return personal items that were awarded to her in divorce agreement. She asked the court to hold him in contempt for violating the custody order and that it be revised to allow her to move the children to Massachusetts, where she plans to attend a program at Harvard.
Warnock is also on board with Stacey Abrams's claim that Georgia Republicans want to make voting difficult for particular demographics , a claim that has not been borne out by voter-turnout data.
But we all know why Georgia voters are faced with such dismal options. The Very Stable Genius inserted himself into the January 2021 runoff, telling voters to stay home. For someone who had a keen interest in conflating Republicanism with Trumpism, he sure fouled his own nest with that move. Not that Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue were any great shakes as candidates, but if the point was to advance the Pub brand, he achieved the opposite.
So the Peachtree State's dilemma is ours as a nation. We can either vote for the party of cowards, nuts and sycophants, or the party of wealth redistribution, identity politics militancy and climate alarmism.
Or we can refrain from voting and network with like-minded citizens who insist on a healthier political ecosystem.
