Months before the Daily Beast published news that Herschel Walker allegedly paid for an abortion, Georgia officials warned Walker and his team of the peril his campaign could be under, in an apparent attempt to discourage him from running.
Four people with knowledge of those discussions say that the issue was well-known in the state, and that Walker’s team downplayed it. According to one of those people, they didn’t deny the claim either.
It was like everything else, ‘Eh, people aren’t going to find out.’
“I remember hearing about this very early and thinking it was like a classic oppo hit,” a GOP opposition researcher recalled. “This abortion thing I heard. Having more kids than he was copping to I heard. And all of this was before we got to the point of him being [the Republican candidate]. I had heard about the alleged liabilities. And abortion was top of the list.”
On Monday, a woman came forward with the receipts about Walker paying $700 in 2009 for her abortion. Walker denies the allegations.
But GOP operatives have rallied to support Walker anyway.
- “They are trying to destroy a man who has true greatness in his future, just as he had athletic greatness in his past,” said Trump.
- “Georgia could decide the Senate majority, so desperate Democrats and liberal media have turned to anonymous sources and character assassination,” said Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. “This is an attempt to distract from Warnock’s record of failure resulting in rising costs and out of control crime.”
- “When the Democrats are losing, as they are right now, they lie and cheat and smear their opponents,” Sen. Rick Scott said. “That’s what’s happening right now. They know they are on the verge of losing the Senate, and they know that Herschel Walker is winning, so they have cranked up the smear machine.”
- “I think he’s the most important Senate candidate in the country because he’ll do more to change the Senate just by the sheer presence, by his confidence, by his deep commitment to Christ,” Newt Gingrich said.
Former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch summed it up by saying that winning is everything, and controlling the Senate is the end game.
Loesch says she doesn’t care if Herschel paid “some skank” for an abortion with his own money when Raphael Warnock “wants to use all of our moneys to pay a whole bunch of skanks for abortions.”