The 2022 election in Georgia is going to be lit. This piece by Tim Miller on Trumper Herschel Walker and his nascent campaign says it all. Trump seems to think he would be best suited to beat Raphael Warnock, but who knows? Maybe he could take on Governor Brian Kemp in a primary:
Ask any football fan about the worst trades in NFL history and the one player they will all mention is Herschel Walker.
Back in 1989 the Dallas Cowboys traded their star running back to the Minnesota Vikings for five players and six draft picks, an unprecedented haul that Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson later described as “the great train robbery.” The Cowboys used those picks to draft Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith and a bunch of other key cogs for the budding dynasty that would dominate the NFL for much of my childhood. For the Vikings on the other hand…well they haven’t been to the big game since 1977.
So you might say that being on the losing end of a swap is something Herschel knows a little bit about.
That’s going to be relevant experience for him, because 30 years after Jimmy J’s big heist, Herschel finds himself as a key player on the losing end of the political trade that turned Georgia—home to his alma mater and site of a potential run for either Senate or governor—into a blue state. In addition to being the answer to an NFL trivia question, Walker is now a card-carrying Trumper. And also a real-world celebrity. Or rather, as close to a “real-world celebrity” as exists in the jackleg MAGA world where Scott Baio and Kevin Sorbo are part of the A-list. Walker even has celebrity progeny: A son who is—I shit you not—a gay, anti-BLM, pro-Trump, TikTok sensation.
Walker currently lives in Texas, but is thought of as a Georgia candidate thanks to his heyday between the hedges. The Trump family wants revenge against Georgia’s Republican political establishment and see Walker as their prime recruit. And, God bless ‘em, the Republican consultant/media complex is getting on board, too.
Reading about Walker, you will see what the Trump family likes about him (spoiler: he’s a Trump suck up). What’s less clear is why Georgia Republicans would want to bring the Walker Texa(n)’s drama to the Peach State.
Miller describes Walker’s admission of having severe mental illness (“dissociative identity disorder” or D.I.D., which is colloquially known as “multiple personality disorder.”) which resulted in serious threats of violence to others and himself. He would play Russian Roulette in front of people.
After his book tour in 2008, Walker became a contestant on Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice reality show where he “finished” a gentleman’s 7th place—behind Joan and Melissa Rivers, but ahead of Khloe Kardashian. The judges felt like his orange chicken with a yogurt dessert was not suitable for the frozen food category. It probably says something that Walker’s self-described competitive streak did not seem to engender any bitterness towards the man who fired him in week nine of the show.
Walker then tried his hand at MMA where he was more successful, finishing 2-0 before determining that he was aging out of a young man’s game.
A few years after that Walker reconnected with Trump and began to show a real interest in politics.
Lucky us.
Walker’s political ideology is somewhat muddled, but the through line that connects it all is his willingness to partake in any conspiracy theory that bubbles up from the MAGA internet.
Some examples.
In October of 2020, many months after Obama began campaigning for Biden, Walker suggested that Obama had delayed doing so because he might be privy to unspecified information about “O’Biden’s son” and “he may have known about it, knew it wasn’t right. And, uh, who knows?”
Who does know?! Not Herschel.
He also proposed a complex theory in which the Communist Party of China funded the Black Lives Matter movement, which in turn funded the Democratic party.
“Why does it seem like I’m the only one that’s coming up with this? Just think about it,” he said.
[Chin Scratch Emoji]
Walker was, of course, early to the #StopTheSteal conspiracy, proposing in the weeks before the election that Biden had already admitted to fraud and suggesting that maybe Obama had cheated in his victories, too.
After the election, Walker, like many other consumers of MAGA media, became increasingly unhinged and radicalized—I understand this might not seem possible. But in this he was egged on by his increasingly visible son, Christian.
To fully understand the extent to which Herschel has internalized the messaging from the dregs of the Parlerified pro-Trump internet, you have to understand his gay, 21-year-old son, Christian, who—prior to becoming a content creator extraordinaire—was a competitive cheerleader.
(I want to break the fourth wall and offer, as a personal aside, that it’s pretty cool for a guy like Herschel to be so supportive of his cheer-squad son. I hope other MAGA dads get some cheerspiration from him on this count. . .)
Christian went on to become a star of the online right during the 2020 campaign, garnering over 400,000 followers on TikTok and 125,000 on Twitter with his sassy, contrarian rants.
Among his first viral hits was a harangue against Joe Biden over the “you ain’t black” gaffe, which Christian marked with the hashtag #JoeBidenIsARacist.
By September he had inhabited all of the trolly bad faith attacks that were popular in pro-Trump internet circles but which you likely would have had no familiarity with if you weren’t an extremely online MAGA.
For instance, Christian crams all of the following conspiracies into one 35 second clip: “Jim Crow” Joe Biden is a “drug addict” because he is “refusing a drug test,” he was demanding breaks every 30 minutes to get his diaper changed or sniff a child backstage, and that his press secretary was talking in his ear during debates. He goes on to call Biden a dementia patient, an elderly patient (?), and an unstable man. Which is a little weird since (a) Joe Biden has never copped to playing Russian Roulette or putting a gun to his wife’s head and (b) presumably the Walkers would tell you that being mentally unstable should not be disqualifying for high office.
As the campaign wore on Christian dedicated his feed to insane anti-Biden rants, condemning Black Lives Matter, and insisting that marginalized communities should stop complaining and be more positive about their opportunities. Like he was. During this time he honed his messaging, became ensconced in the MAGA web, and saw his online follower count skyrocket. As Christian’s commitment to the bit solidified, so did his dad’s ability to communicate in TheDonaldeeze.
Like many of their compatriots, the Walkers were undeterred by Trump’s loss.
On November 21, Herschel claimed that some of our elected officials knew about the fantastical “Dominion fraud” and that, as a result, they might end up in jail. The next day Herschel sent two tweets about his faith in Sidney Powell, saying that doubters “will be shocked” when Powell “lays the SMACKDOWN.”
Later that day he announced that he was moving over to the greener pastures of Parler, @HerschelWalker34.
Oops.
In December the Walkers visited with Maria Bartiromo about the state of affairs. Herschel lamented that his son’s first time voting had been tainted by (imaginary) voter fraud and demanded that people go to jail for . . . whatever. He went on to say that punishing the “bad players” who committed the fraud was the “only way you can make this country free.” He then ranted about how Trump needs to stay in power to punish the people who “have done the bad things.”
I think this president is going to bring law and order back to this country that’s the way we can get back to the country we used to be, the United States of America that believes in law and order and you got to send people to jail that have done the bad things. And I hate to say it, I don’t care where you’re from, whether you’re in Washington or whether you’re from the smallest town in the United States of America. If you’ve done something wrong, you need to go to jail and just know you’re going to get a knock at your door and I think that’s the only way you can solve this.
In the middle of Herschel demanding that the defeated president stay in power against the will of the people and jail his political enemies, Bartiromo interjected to compliment Christian on his Instagram posts raising awareness about the upcoming January 6 election certification. Christian and Bartiromo then agree that the election was “far from over.” (Reminder: At the time of this interview the election had been over for six weeks.)
Herschel and Christian continued to bang the drum about fraud all the way up through Insurrection Day. In one of the many…many…tweets Christian sent about election fraud in January, he declared that to get a fair vote in Georgia, someone should “throw Stacey Abrams a bucket of Popeyes fried chicken to distract her.”
On January 4, Herschel praised Lin Wood and said “America needs a total cleansing only Donald Trump can do with the help of TRUE PATRIOTS…Whatever it takes to get the job done.” Two days later when those true patriots went to the Capitol to get the job done, Herschel tweeted that they were “trojan horses.” Then he went dark on the platform for a month.
Sitting in sunny California, Christian was more clear-eyed about the patriots that he and his father had helped inspire.
Expect more of this?
Alrighty then.
There’s more at the link… oy vey.
Apparently, the Georgia MAGAs are over the moon at the prospect of Walker entering the race for either Senator or Governor and they seem to believe his winning the election is a slam dunk since he’s Black, a Trumper and a former football star which they think covers all the bases. And maybe it does. I honestly feel like I don’t know anything anymore.