Trump and national GOP leaders are backing Herschel Walker after abortion allegations, even as his son says he's a 'liar'
- Herschel Walker paid for a woman's abortion despite his pro-life stance, the Daily Beast reported.
- Walker denied it, but his TikTok influencer son Christian is calling him a liar in a series of tweets and videos.
Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker is facing yet another scandal in the high-stakes US Senate election in Georgia, where the one-time professional football player is seeking to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
The Daily Beast reported Monday night that Walker reimbursed a woman for an abortion in 2009, despite the candidate's strong public stance against abortion rights.
Walker denied the story and said he would sue the outlet for defamation on Tuesday morning, though the suit had yet to materialize as of Tuesday afternoon.
Walker's son Christian, a conservative social media influencer, lashed out at his father in a series of tweets and videos, calling him a liar.
National Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, are standing by Walker despite all of this.
Here's what we know so far:
Walker allegedly paid for a woman's abortion in 2009
The Daily Beast's Roger Sollenberger reported on Tuesday evening that Walker and a woman he was dating in 2009 conceived a child. Walker, saying it was "not the right time" for him to raise a child, encouraged the woman to get an abortion, and paid her $700 to reimburse her for the procedure in September of that year.
The woman corroborated the story with a receipt, a signed check from Walker, and even a "get well" card — a photo of which is included in the Beast's report.
"I just can't with the hypocrisy anymore," she told the outlet, explaining why she decided to come forward. "We all deserve better."
Walker is staunchly anti-abortion rights
Like most Republican candidates and elected officials, Walker is broadly opposed to abortion.
However, he takes it further than most — likening commonly-accepted exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape and incest, as well as pregnancies that threaten the life of the mother, to "excuses."
Additionally, while most Republicans sought to distance themselves from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina's 15-week national abortion ban, Walker was the rare Senate candidate who enthusiastically backed it.
"Raphael Warnock wants to protect the killing of babies right up to the moment of birth. We need to do better," Walker said in a statement to POLITICO in September. "I am a proud pro-life Christian, and I will always stand up for our unborn children. I believe the issue should be decided at the state level, but I WOULD support this policy."
Walker is denying the story and threatening to sue
In a statement, Walker called the report a "flat-out lie," accused the reporter of being a "democrat activist," and said he would sue The Daily Beast for defamation.
Ahead of publication, Walker campaign lawyer Robert Ingram told the Daily Beast that the story was "false" and accused the outlet of only publishing "stories to target Black conservatives." Curiously, he asked for the identity of the woman, which the outlet declined to provide.
Walker also suggested to Axios reporter Emma Hurt that he was being racially targeted.
"I think right now, I ask this question: Would they be doing that if I was white?" he told Hurt.
Walker then went on Sean Hannity's Fox News show on Monday night and continued to deny the story.
"I send money to a lot of people," he said of the $700 check.
As of Tuesday afternoon, no lawsuit had been filed.
National Republicans and Trump are standing by Walker
Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement Tuesday that Democrats were lying and seeking to smear Walker and said the group would "stand with him."
"This is just like the smears they attempted against Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, and it will not work," said Scott in a statement, referring to two conservative Supreme Court justices accused of sexual misconduct prior to their confirmations to the bench.
"We are full speed ahead in Georgia," said Steven Law, head of a GOP super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a statement to New York Times reporter Shane Goldmacher.
"Hershel Walker has denied these allegations in the strongest possible terms and we stand firmly alongside him," a spokeswoman for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America told Axios's Alexi McCammond.
"Herschel Walker is being slandered and maligned by the Fake News Media and obviously, the Democrats," Trump said in a statement.
And Warnock is staying out of it
"I'll let the pundits decide how they think it will impact the race," Warnock told Bluestein.
But this is just the latest scandal for Walker
Since launching his Senate campaign, Walker has been dogged by several scandals, including allegations that he abused his ex-wife and the fact that he's fathered several previously undisclosed children.
"He held the gun to my temple and said he was gonna blow my brains out," his ex-wife, Christian's mother, said in a TV interview that's now being used in an attack ad.
Now, Christian Walker is speaking out against his father
Walker's son, a social media influencer known for his bombastic TikToks and Instagram Reels highlighting his conservative views, took to Twitter after the Daily Beast published the story.
"Every family member of Herschel Walker asked him not to run for office, because we all knew (some of) his past," he tweeted on Monday night.
"You're not a "family man" when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence," he wrote in another tweet. "You've lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives."
On Tuesday morning, Christian posted a pair of videos on Twitter in which he seemingly confirmed some of the details of the Beast's reporting while calling his father a liar.
"It's literally his handwriting in the card," he said of the "get well" card sent to the woman. "He gets on Twitter, he lies about it. Okay, I'm done. Done! Everything has been a lie."
"Don't lie about your life at the expense of me, my mom, and all of the people that you've affected throughout your life," he said in the second video. "You don't get to pretend to be some moral family guy."