Senate candidate Herschel Walker of Georgia is trying to play a “Jedi mind trick” on voters in regards to an ever-growing number of scandals regarding the former football player’s unacknowledged children, according to one of the reporters who broke the story.
Roger Sollenberger of the Daily Beast has reported that Mr Walker, a staunch Republican and opponent of abortion, paid for the 2009 abortion of a woman he was in a relationship with, the same year he had an out-of-wedlock child with a separate woman.
“So he’s doing some sort of Jedi mind trick where he says ‘I deny it on one hand’ and then, you know, he’s also, like, asking, you know, appealing to redemption or appealing to forgiveness and grace and all of that,” the reporter told MSNBC on Thursday. “So which one is it? Can you hold those ideas in your head at the same time? Some people might be able to. That’s kind of disturbing.”
Mr Walker denied knowing the woman or paying for the abortion, even though Sollenberger then reported that the GOP candidate had in fact carried on a lengthy relationship with and had a child with the first woman.
In a Thursday radio show appearance with host Hugh Hewitt, Mr Walker reiterated that the stories were "totally, totally untrue” while simultaneously seeming to ask the public’s forgiveness, telling listeners, “I wasn’t perfect. I had my problems with mental health…I have a new life. I’ve been moving forward.”
"If that had happened, I would have said it, because there’s nothing to be ashamed of there," Mr Walker then said, in reference to the abortion. "You know, people have done that, but I know nothing about it."
Several hours later – at an event on Thursday – he was asked about those comments and denied that they were about the woman claiming she had an abortion. Instead, Mr Walker said he was talking about a past, separate relationship with his ex-wife. “I was talking about something totally different,” he said.
The Independent has contacted Mr Walker’s campaign for comment.
Critics have seized on the apparent contradiction between the Georgia football legend’s positions on abortion — he’s called for a total abortion ban with “no exception” for rape, murder, or the life of the pregnant person — and claims about his personal decisions.
"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,’” the woman who had the relationship and abortion while with Mr Walker, who chose to remain anonymous to protect her privacy, told The Daily Beast. “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.”
Mr Walker has said that the multiple children revealed to the public during the course of the campaign weren’t unacknowledged, but rather that he didn’t mention them to the media.
“I have four children. Three sons and a daughter. They’re not ‘undisclosed’ — they’re my kids,” he said in June. “Saying I hide my children because I don’t discuss them with reporters to win a campaign? That’s outrageous. I can take the heat, that’s politics — but leave my kids alone.”
Despite everything, national Republicans are sticking with the Georgia Senate candidate.
“Republicans stand with him,” Senator Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told The New York Times.
Voters don’t seem to mind either. His campaign has raked in more than $500,000 this week since the abortion story broke.
