After a woman revealed that Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker had urged her to have an abortion, Walker flatly denied the story and claimed he had no idea who the woman might be.
But there is a good reason why the woman finds this defense very dubious: she is the mother of one of his children.
When the woman first told her story to The Daily Beast, we agreed not to reveal certain details about her identity for security and privacy reasons. But then Walker flatly denied the story and said he didn’t know who was making the allegation.
On Wednesday morning, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade asked Walker if he had figured out the identity of the woman, based on details from the original report.
“Not at all,” Walker replied. “And that’s what I hope everyone can see. It’s kind of like everyone’s anonymous, or everyone’s on the run, and they want you to confess something you have no idea.
Walker then framed the report as an attack by “desperate” Democrats eager to retain control of the central Senate seat. Instead of being deterred by his now public hypocrisy, he said he now felt “energized”.
“They see me as a big threat, and I know that and I knew that when I came into this race. But they don’t realize I think they came for the bad. They energized me,” Walker said. “They energized me, because I know how badly they really want to try to keep that seat.”
The unnamed woman said the defense looked ridiculous.
“Of course I was stunned, but I guess it doesn’t shock me either, that maybe there are so many of us that he really doesn’t remember,” she said. “But again, if he really forgot it, that also means something.”
The woman, a registered Democrat whose years-long relationship with Walker continued after the abortion, told The Daily Beast that her main concern about her name being revealed was that she was the mother of one of the Walker’s own children and that she wanted to protect her family’s privacy. as best she could while revealing the truth. (Walker has publicly acknowledged the child as his own, and the woman has proven herself to be the child’s mother and provided credible evidence of a long-term relationship with Walker.)
The Walker campaign declined to comment for this story.
But even with the woman remaining unnamed, the story still shook Walker’s family in other ways.
After Walker denied the report, one of his three sons, conservative social media influencer Christian Walker, released a series of angry statements and videos condemning his father as a liar and alleging the soccer hero from the University of Georgia had threatened to murder him and his mother – Walker’s ex-wife.
“I know my mother and I would really appreciate it if my father Herschel Walker would stop lying and making fun of us”, Christian Walker tweeted after the abortion story broke Monday night. “You are not a ‘family man’ when you left us to hit a group of women, threatened to kill us, and made us move house 6 times in 6 months because of your violence.”
The unnamed woman said that although she was a “good sport” about the campaign, after Walker’s denial she could no longer hide this information from the public.
“I’ve been very courteous so far. I keep my mouth shut. I don’t cause any trouble. I stay behind. But I’m also not going to get squashed over and over again,” she said. “It’s crazy.”
Walker and his campaign have delivered seemingly contradictory messages to combat the story, denying it as a “lie” on the one hand while also appealing to themes of religious redemption and forgiveness on the other. On a Wednesday, Walker posted a new ad where he discusses overcome one’s difficulties with sanity “by the grace of God”.
But if Walker is seeking abortion redemption, that would be a recent change. He lied about his role in abortions this year alone – once in a June interview with The Daily Beast, and later to a Democratic activist posing as a Walker supporter, who caught his denials on video.
Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images
Asked about the role faith has played in Walker’s life, the unnamed woman, who identifies herself as a Christian, said that although Walker often spoke about Christianity, he used it “when it worked for him. “.
She said Walker spoke frequently about being a Christian, but never once expressed doubts about abortion in general — or regret about the one they had. When she got pregnant again years later, the woman says she made a different choice, though Walker said it still wasn’t “a good time” for him.
“He expressed no regrets. He said, “Relax and recover,” the woman recalled, alluding to the message on the “Get well” card Walker sent her with payment for the abortion.
“He seemed pretty pro-choice to me. He was pro-choice, obviously,” she said.
“I don’t think there’s a place in the Bible where it says ‘have four kids with four different wives while you’re with another wife.’ Or where he praises not being a current parent Or that having an abortion is an okay thing to do when it’s not the right time for you, but a terrible thing to do for anyone in the world. ‘other when you run for the Senate. He picks and chooses where it suits him to use that religious crutch,” she said.
The campaign used the woman’s desire to remain anonymous to raise funds, saying in his first fundraising email after the news broke: “Now they are using an anonymous source to further slander me.”
When asked what she thought of the campaign to boast that Walker saw record contributions in the hours after he called her a liar, the woman said she hoped they would donate the money.
“It would be really nice if when he lost they would give that money to someone who needs it,” she said. “Maybe to a mental health organization. That would be really nice of them, instead of taking this and putting it in another politician’s pocket, they used it to help someone else.
Walker finds his campaign in crisis as Election Day is a month away. The outcome of the race could tip the scales in the Senate, and the polls are tight. Recent polls taken before the abortion announcement show Walker trailing his Democratic opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock, narrowly.
But the woman’s allegation reframed the race and sent Republicans scrambling.
According to reports by The Daily Beast, after Walker and the woman first conceived a child in 2009, he urged her to have an abortion and then repaid her. The woman provided a receipt from the clinic showing the date of the procedure, as well as a signed personal check that Walker mailed to her in a “healing” card five days later.
But a lot Republican donors and media personalities– including Walker himself – seized the women anonymity at reject the report. On Tuesday, former National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch called her “a wide” and one “tease.”
Overall, however, the story was clearly successful.
“It’s good to see that my story has been so well received,” the woman said, “because I’m telling the truth. I’m not trying to glorify abortion – it’s a very personal choice that everyone has to make for themselves – but I have no shame in doing so. It’s like that. It’s part of my story and what makes me who I am today.
The woman added that she hopes her story will inspire others to feel less alone, “to maybe find comfort and a sense of dignity.”
“You are not a monster, not a murderer,” she continued. “These are real-life decisions that can completely change your life. Making it so black and white makes it easy for these old men to say it’s wrong or it’s right, but they’ve never been put in a position where it’s been done to their bodies.
She said it was wrong, however, for Walker to use abortion when it suited her personally and try to deny others the procedure when it suited her politically.
“He didn’t accept responsibility for the child we had together, and now he doesn’t accept responsibility for the one we didn’t have. That says a lot about how he sees the role of women in childbirth, versus his own. And now he wants to completely take that choice away from other women and couples,” she said.
“It was a decision I had to make – twice – about my future and that of a potential child, and I was able to make it both times. And Herschel was also able to have a say. The fact that he now thinks it’s OK to just take that off,” she said, “I just can’t understand.
