Try To Contain Your Shock, but It Turns Out the ‘All Abortion Is Murder’ Guy Is a Hypocrite
Georgia’s Republican candidate for Senate, Herschel Walker, has not been shy—or maybe just terrible at covering up—his hypocrisy. He’s largely centered his campaign around “family values,” despite his history of domestic violence (both admitted and alleged) and the fact that during the course of the campaign, he’s been revealed to have multiple children he’s tried to keep secret.
Part of Walker’s already intensely hypocritical “family values” stance has included a hard-line opposition to abortion, which he says should be banned in all cases, with no exceptions, including for rape, incest, or to save the life of the pregnant person. He does apparently support one exception, though—himself.
The Daily Beast spoke to a woman who says she became pregnant while dating Walker in 2009 and that he paid for her to get an abortion, telling her it was “not the right time” for him to have a child. “It was a feeling she shared, but what she didn’t know was that Walker had an out-of-wedlock child with another woman earlier that same year,” the outlet writes.
The Daily Beast corroborated the woman’s account with a friend she confided in at the time, and who took care of her following the procedure. They also have a receipt for the abortion procedure, a digital image of the $700 check Walker sent the woman, and the get-well card he signed and mailed with the check.
These allegations are major but also entirely predictable. There’s nothing surprising about a powerful man deciding his own standards don’t apply to him. It’s also important to remember that the anti-abortion movement isn’t actually about the act of abortion, it’s about control. So Walker’s hypocrisy is completely on-brand for someone who has worked to center his public image around the issue.
Walker has denied the woman’s account and some of his biggest anti-abortion super PAC supporters are standing by him (just further proving that abortion itself is not as important to them as electing leaders who will stop the poor and middle-class masses from having access to abortion resources).
One person who has turned against Walker is his son, Christian. Christian Walker has built a social media following based on his persona as an ultra-conservative, Black, gay influencer. He has supported and promoted his father’s campaign online but following the publication of The Daily Beast’s report, he lashed out on Twitter.
“Every family member of Herschel Walker asked him to not to run for office, because we all knew (some of) his past,” he tweeted. “Every single one. He decided to give us the middle finger and air out all of his dirty laundry in public, while simultaneously lying about it. I’m done.”
This story broke, by the way, just hours after it was revealed that Dr. Mehmet Oz—currently running for Senate in Pennsylvania—was accused of being responsible for the deaths of more than 300 dogs (and over 700 other animals) due to allegedly unethical and illegal animal testing in medical experiments he oversaw.
These are the types candidates Republicans are putting forward.
(image: Megan Varner/Getty Images)
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