I just can’t get over the nerve of the GOP
The man is incoherent and it will be an embarrassment to our country if he defeats Rafael Warnock, a brilliant speaker and leader. It’s unthinkable. And yet, it may very well happen.
I encourage you to read the best profile of Walker by Tim Miller, if you haven’t already. It’s a stunning expose of a man who is manifestly unfit for any public office. (Not that you can’t tell that from the above quotes.) He starts off relaying the story of Walker’s storied football career if you are unfamiliar and it’s not quite as positive as you might have been led to believe.
And then he parlayed his name into some other things including “The Apprentice.” Then came politics.
Enter Herschel Walker.
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.
In a 2008 interview with Nightline, Herschel wanted to tell the world “my truth.” (He was ahead of the game in the now omnipresent cultural distinction between “the truth” and “my truth” so, points for that I guess?)
Part of his truth was that he had been diagnosed with a rare mental illness called “dissociative identity disorder” or D.I.D., which is colloquially known as “multiple personality disorder.”
While some of his work with the Patriot Support Program and others to destigmatize the disease is laudatory, the “darker behavior” that he attributes to this problem is rather shocking.
In the 2008 interview his ex-wife said “we were talking and the next thing I knew he just kind of raged and he got a gun and put it to my temple.” She later attributed it to one of Walker’s alternate personalities saying, “there was somebody there that was evil.” Walker subsequently “threatened to kill his wife, his wife’s friend, and his therapist” in a therapy session.
In 2015 Walker told ESPN that he used to play “Russian Roulette” when guests came to his home. He described these encounters as part of a test of wills, where he would demand that anyone who wanted to challenge him in an athletic endeavor first demonstrate their strength by participating.
So I take a bullet, put it in the cylinder, spin it and tell you to pull it. People would say “Herschel, you’re nuts.” I would take that gun, put it to my head, and snap it. That is what it was. I was so fired up that I could overcome anything.
Walker survived the gamble of performative self-harm and he went on to do a series of interviews discussing them during his various post-football promotional endeavors. “Russian Roulette In Front of House Guests” became, along with “worst trade in NFL history,” part of his brand identity.
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.
It’s absolutely mind-boggling that Georgians may very well vote for this man. The polls are close with most showing Walker leading by a point or two. I can’t believe it.
Read Miller’s whole piece. There’s a lot more about his descent into MAGA madness. It would be sad if it wasn’t so dangerous.