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As he wriggles at the center of an abortion scandal, self-proclaimed anti-abortion absolutist Herschel Walker is setting fire to the facade of conservative religiosity.
Ever since The Daily Beast first alleged that he had paid a romantic partner to obtain an abortion in 2009, Walker, the Republican Senate candidate in Georgia, has had trouble keeping up with his explanations. And Bible-thumping Republicans, who have made a habit of touting their Christian bona fides and equating abortion with murder, are shamelessly going along with each of his denials.
Right-wing Christians are using their Bibles to play whack-a-mole with each new allegation.
The Daily Beast’s Wednesday follow-up to Tuesday’s bombshell has Walker’s team and many right-wing Christians grasping at straws. Despite Walker’s initial claims that he never paid for an abortion and didn’t even know who could be accusing him of such a thing, The Daily Beast reported that the woman is the mother of a child Walker fathered and allegedly hasn’t cared for. (In a statement, Walker said: “There’s no truth to this or any other Daily Beast report.” MSNBC and NBC News have not verified the woman’s allegations or independently reviewed the evidence that The Daily Beast says supports her account.)
Yikes. Just to revel in the potential hypocrisy, it’s worth saying plainly: Herschel Walker, a self-proclaimed abortion hater who loves berating Black men for supposed absenteeism, is alleged to be an abortion-seeking absentee father. And right-wing Christians are using their Bibles to play whack-a-mole with each new allegation.
Let’s trace Walker’s seemingly shifting explanations.
When the story broke Tuesday, Walker claimed it was false and said he would file a lawsuit against The Daily Beast the following morning. (Spoiler alert: He still hasn’t filed that lawsuit, and I doubt he will.) Many conservative “Christians” in the GOP came to his defense, denouncing the story as fake and, in some cases, putting their hands on Walker in prayer. Others, like right-wing media figure Dana Loesch, made it abundantly clear that her faith is just a formality.
Loesch said she doesn’t care whether Walker paid for “some skank” to get an abortion. She just wants Republican control of the Senate.
By Wednesday morning, Walker and his campaign seemed to be testing a different response to the story: They released an ad in which Walker says he has been “saved” by the grace of God.
“As everyone knows, I had a real battle with mental health. Even wrote a book about it. And by the grace of God, I’ve overcome it,” Walker says in the ad, referring to his 2008 memoir about living with dissociative identity disorder, in which he alludes to having been violent. His ex-wife has shared allegations that he abused her, including a claim he held a gun to her head and said, “I’m going to blow your f’ing brains out.” Walker hasn’t denied the claim; he told ABC News in 2008 that he couldn’t remember.
Walker’s hypocrisy has right-wing Christians so disoriented and incapable of crafting a response, they couldn’t find the moral high ground if they had a compass.
As many were quick to note, Walker allegedly paid for the abortion in 2009, after the book dropped, so this ad posed more questions than answers.
Was Walker admitting to the abortion he denied? If so, lying is sinful; has he asked for forgiveness again for what he said Tuesday? And, fundamentally, why should a seeming hypocrite like Walker be allowed to dictate whether anyone else can get an abortion?
Either way, right-wing Christians don’t care: They’re still all in on Walker. A Politico article on Thursday morning described many of them as unfazed by the allegations.
And good for them, I guess, because after Wednesday’s report that the woman who allegedly had the abortion has a child with Walker, the campaign was once again denying the story outright. As of Thursday afternoon, Walker was back to speaking mysteriously about the claims.
In an interview, he told right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt that the allegations were false before claiming that there would be “nothing to be ashamed of” if they were true.
Again, this is coming from a man who wants to ban all abortions and has claimed that the procedure is akin to killing babies.
Walker’s hypocrisy has right-wing Christians so disoriented and incapable of crafting a response, they couldn’t find the moral high ground if they had a compass. Did he pay for an abortion, or didn’t he? Has he been an absentee father, or hasn’t he? The allegations continue to mount, and Republicans are looking for ways to spin the stories into positives, while Walker seems to only tenuously acknowledge the truth.
It just shows, to Loesch’s point, that these people believe in domination and control more than any intelligible religion. Their “God” is a convenient figment of their imagination, a rubber stamp to excuse all of their sins and misdeeds while damning their enemies.