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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHerschel Walker will speak at Trump rally in Georgia
Herschel Walker, the NFL-star-turned-Senate-hopeful, will speak at former President Trumps rally in Georgia on Saturday.
Walker will be joined by two other Georgia Republicans running for statewide office, Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), whos challenging Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and state Sen. Burt Jones, whos running to replace outgoing Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan. The planned appearances will put three of Trumps preferred candidates on the same stage as him when he travels to Perry, Ga., on Saturday.
For Walker, in particular, the Trump rally will serve as something of a debut on the public campaign circuit. Earlier this month, he made his first public appearance since entering the Georgia Senate race when he attended the University of Georgia's football home opener.
Walker has kept a relatively low profile on the campaign trail. Hes appeared at fundraisers and sat for occasional interviews with friendly media outlets, but hasnt held a large-scale campaign rally yet. Walker holds broad name recognition in Georgia from his days playing college football at the University of Georgia and his endorsement from Trump gives him an early leg up in the GOP primary to take on Warnock.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/573258-herschel-walker-will-speak-at-trump-rally-in-georgia
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)... it's obvious that he doesn't fully understand what it is he's saying. I think he suffered too many concussions.
Mr.Bill
(24,330 posts)no-show classes in college.
At least we know he won't be reading from a teleprompter.
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)House of Roberts
(5,186 posts)Hassler
(3,390 posts)left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)According to an article in APNews
https://apnews.com/article/college-football-sports-football-georgia-senate-elections-cf8942c8dcdbfbc3aeb28150d7ad5a0c
Skittles
(153,199 posts)DanieRains
(4,619 posts)Or his how to treat "girls" speech?
mzmolly
(51,006 posts)and a human being.
11 Bravo
(23,926 posts)than does my sweet rescue lab.
mzmolly
(51,006 posts)I disagree on his greatness. https://www.bemidjipioneer.com/sports/football/5407226-Despite-three-uninspiring-seasons-with-Vikings-Herschel-Walker-says-he-belongs-in-hall-of-fame
Admittedly he lost my interest after 'playing' for the Vikes.
LetMyPeopleVote
(145,619 posts)sheshe2
(83,929 posts)Celerity
(43,545 posts)attack advert on this nutter.
WarGamer
(12,484 posts)JohnSJ
(92,422 posts)Celerity
(43,545 posts)538 and RCP atm.
The only reason I posted them was to show that Walker is one of the main possibilities on the Rethug side, and thus needs to be destroyed ASAP.
WarGamer
(12,484 posts)The Trafalgar poll is more than possible.
True Dough
(17,331 posts)What a way to ruin his reputation.
LenaBaby61
(6,979 posts)What reputation?
He never had one. Pulling Guns on his wife, stalking her and I think her doctor and God knows what else he's done. He's got a mental disorder:
The National Alliance on Mental Illness describes dissociative identity disorder as alternating between multiple identities, leaving a person with gaps in memory of everyday events. It notes men with the disorder exhibit more violent behavior rather than amnesia.
And that crazy, anti-black son of his who said blacks are MORE racist than whites ever were. The son's gay and half black, yet he hates gays and black people
As Herschel Walker eyes Senate run, a turbulent past emerges
By BRIAN SLODYSKO, BILL BARROW and JAKE BLEIBERG
July 23, 2021
FILE - In this July 16, 2019, file photo, Herschel Walker talks about 150 years of college football during the NCAA college football Southeastern Conference Media Day in Hoover, Ala. Walker appears to have a coveted political profile for a potential Senate candidate in Georgia. (AP Photo/Butch Dill, File)
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FILE - In this July 16, 2019, file photo, Herschel Walker talks about 150 years of college football during the NCAA college football Southeastern Conference Media Day in Hoover, Ala. Walker appears to have a coveted political profile for a potential Senate candidate in Georgia. (AP Photo/Butch Dill, File)
ATLANTA (AP) At first glance, Herschel Walker has a coveted political profile for a potential Senate candidate in Georgia.
He was a football hero at the University of Georgia before his long NFL career. Hes a business owner whose chicken products are distributed across the U.S. And hes a Black conservative with backing from former President Donald Trump, a longtime friend.
But an Associated Press review of hundreds of pages of public records tied to Walkers business ventures and his divorce, including many not previously reported, sheds new light on a turbulent personal history that could dog his Senate bid. The documents detail accusations that Walker repeatedly threatened his ex-wifes life, exaggerated claims of financial success and alarmed business associates with unpredictable behavior.
Walker, now 59, has at times been open about his long struggle with mental illness, writing at length in a 2008 book about being diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, once known as multiple personality disorder. But its unclear how he would discuss these events as a candidate.
Walker did not respond to requests for comment. Multiple emails went unanswered, although his executive assistant confirmed they were received. AP also sent emails and left a message with his long-time attorney, who did not respond.
The Georgia seat is a top target for Republicans as they try to take control of the U.S. Senate in next years midterm elections. Walkers potential bid is a wildcard. He might easily win the GOP primary with Trumps help, setting up a general election fight against Democrat Raphael Warnock, who became Georgias first Black senator after a special election in January. But Republican leaders in Washington and Georgia are concerned that Walkers history might haunt his campaign.
Walker certainly could bring a lot of things to the table, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, said in a recent interview. But as others have mentioned, theres also a lot of questions out there.
Walker has yet to announce his intentions, but he has been consulting with political advisers in Georgia. A native of tiny Wrightsville, between Atlanta and Savannah, the former Dallas Cowboys star retired after the 1997 season and now resides in Texas. In a video posted to Twitter last month, he revs the engine of a sports car and says, Im getting ready, and we can run with the big dogs, before revealing a Georgia license plate.
The Twitter tease intensified buzz about the potential for a celebrity candidate. But it also helped surface details about Walkers troubled past, many first disclosed by Walker himself in his 2008 book, Breaking Free.
His account details years of struggles and an eventual diagnosis in 2001. Walker describes himself dealing with as many as a dozen personalities or alters that he had constructed as a defense against bullying he suffered as a stuttering, overweight child.
In an AP interview at the time, Walker emphasized his purpose was to help others with similar disorders. People say, Herschel is just trying to write something to make money, he said. I say, Guys, why would I write something like this to make money?
The National Alliance on Mental Illness describes dissociative identity disorder as alternating between multiple identities, leaving a person with gaps in memory of everyday events. It notes men with the disorder exhibit more violent behavior rather than amnesia.
In his book, Walker acknowledges violent urges. He writes that he played Russian roulette and recounts sitting at his kitchen table in 1991 pointing a gun, loaded with a single bullet, at his head. I wasnt suicidal, Walker explained, but just looked at mortality as the ultimate challenge.
The book is framed as a turnaround story. He describes it as cathartic and casts himself as someone on the path to integration because of therapy and his Christian faith.
A watershed moment, he writes, came in February 2001, when he drove around suburban Dallas, hunting for a man who he said was avoiding his calls after being days late delivering a car Walker had purchased.
The logical side of me knew that what I was thinking of doing to this man murdering him for messing up my schedule wasnt a viable alternative, Walker wrote. But another side of me was so angry that all I could think was how satisfying it would feel to step out of the car, pull out the gun, slip off the safety, and squeeze the trigger.
Ultimately, Walker wrote, he had a change of heart after seeing a SMILE. JESUS LOVES YOU bumper sticker on the mans car-hauling truck. He decided to seek professional help.
Id been running for most of life, from what only I really knew but seldom talked about. It was time to stop running and face some harsh realities, he wrote.
Walkers threatening behavior continued well after the 2001 revelation, according to court records obtained by AP that have not previously been reported.
Four years later, in December 2005, Cindy Grossman, Walkers ex-wife, secured a protective order against him, alleging violent and controlling behavior.
Grossman has said she was long a victim of Walkers impulses. When his book was released, she told ABC News that at one point during their marriage, her husband pointed a pistol at her head and said, Im going to blow your fing brains out. She filed for divorce in 2001, citing physically abusive and extremely threatening behavior.
In seeking protection from a judge in Dallas County, Grossman filed an affidavit from her sister, which described Walker as unwilling to accept that his former wife had begun dating another man.
Grossman told the court she got calls during that period from her sister and father, both of whom had been contacted by Walker. He told family members that he would kill her and her new boyfriend, according to Maria Tsettos, Cindy Grossmans sister.
In an affidavit, Tsettos claimed Walker once called looking for his ex-wife while she was out with her boyfriend. Tsettos took the call and said Walker became very threatening when told of Grossmans whereabouts. In Tsettos recollection, Walker stated unequivocally that he was going to shoot my sister Cindy and her boyfriend in the head.
On another occasion, Tsettos said she talked to Walker at length after hed reached out to her online. He expressed to me that he was frustrated with (Cindy) and that he felt like he had had enough and that he wanted to blow their f------ heads off, she recalled of the Dec. 9, 2005, exchange.
Two days later he called again and told Tsettos that he possessed a gun and planned that day to act on his threats, which he repeated in graphic language, she said.
Later that day, Walker confronted his ex-wife outside a mall when she was picking up their son from a party, according to her petition for a protective order.
In her account, she said Walker slowly drove by in his vehicle, pointed his finger at (her) and traced (her) with his finger as he drove.
When officers in Irving, Texas, contacted Walker, he denied that hed made the threats, according to a police report the AP obtained through a public records request. But the sisters account was concerning enough to police that they took for safe keeping a gun Walker had on the floor of his car, the report states.
A judge agreed, finding good cause to issue a protective order. He also barred Walker from possessing guns for a period of time.
Grossman, her divorce lawyer and Tsettos did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the AP.
Walkers unpredictable behavior has carried into his chicken business, now known as Renaissance Man Food Services, according to court filings. His book itself was a shock.
The primary distributor of his products considered severing their relationship after Walkers book came out. Kristin Caffey, then a poultry manager for the food distributor Sysco, said the revelations in the book, as well as Walkers effort to publicize it, created havoc for the company.
We werent aware that it was coming out, and we were blindsided, Caffey, who worked directly with Walker, said in a 2019 deposition. We had all kinds of people calling in about it, and we didnt have answers to it, she added, saying, it was problematic for us being engaged with him at the time.
Ultimately, the company chose to stick with Walker after the negative publicity died down, Caffey said.
More recently, Walker has made outsize claims about his business record. In repeated media interviews, Walker claimed his company employed hundreds of people, included a chicken processing division in Arkansas and grossed $70 million to $80 million annually in sales.
However, when the company applied for a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan last year, it reported just eight employees. (It received about $182,000 in COVID-19 aid.)
In a recent court case, Walker gave far more modest revenue figures, indicating that the company averaged about $1.5 million a year in profit from 2008 to 2017. Meanwhile, Walkers business associates testified in the same case that he doesnt own chicken processing plants, as he claims. Instead, they described him as a licensing partner who lends his name to the enterprise not unlike the kind of deals his friend Donald Trump has used to expand his brand for decades.
A wrongful termination lawsuit filed in 2018 by a friend and former manager of Walkers company created an extensive record of Walkers leadership. Although a judge ruled against the employee, John Staples, emails, documents and depositions in the case present Walker as a temperamental and unreliable business partner.
Walker persistently complained that his business partners were trying to cheat him out of money, the documents say. And they indicate he repeatedly fought with his associates over his focus on branching into frozen waffles, which he believed would be a future moneymaker for the company.
In 2017, an executive for the company that supplied chicken to Walker sent a concerned email, inquiring about $7,200 in expenses he said Walker had incorrectly tried to bill the company from his efforts to secure the waffle deal. The executive, now Simmons Foods Chief Operating Officer and President David Jackson, also cited concerning comments hed heard that raise questions about how the business is being operated. The email does not detail the comments that raised alarms.
Staples did not respond to requests for comment. Jacksons office did not make him available for comment, and a message left with a spokesperson for Simmons Foods was not returned.
In a deposition, Walker dismissed Staples as a puppy.
Im a big dog. I dont play with puppies, Walker said.
Since then, another business venture tied to Walker could also face trouble.
Last month, a Texas bank sued Walker and another business partner over an unpaid $200,000 debt secured to help finance a pizza restaurant. According to court filings, Walker personally guaranteed the loan.
Walker has not yet filed his response to the suit.
___
https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-sports-nfl-college-football-coronavirus-pandemic-5e2875eec11e93f9a3bf1fc859137ff8
bluestarone
(17,058 posts)rethuglicon
Carlitos Brigante
(26,505 posts)bluestarone
(17,058 posts)What can i say? They ALL truly deserve each other!
Treefrog
(4,170 posts)Says it all!
madinmaryland
(64,933 posts)WarGamer
(12,484 posts)I don't get it.
Inside Trader Barbie and "Man with the Haircut of a Donkey" didn't lose it Georgia because they didn't get enough votes from Bubba the "Dawg fan"...
They lost because they couldn't get college educated mostly moderate white women to the polls.
So they think Walker will pull in more College Educated folks? More women? Soccer moms?
Or maybe think that Walker=Black so he'll pull in the AA vote, right? Lol... I don't think so.
If I were advising them I'd recommend some "typical GOP'er" like Jody Hice?? Someone not risky...
GOP about to learn that the Bubba vote can't win a state-wide election
MissMillie
(38,582 posts)...don't want to come off as someone who makes fun of people suffering from mental illness.
Actually, it's not that I don't want to come off that way, it's more like I'm NOT that way.
Red Mountain
(1,737 posts)psychopaths in the Senate. That isn't making fun of Walker.
MissMillie
(38,582 posts)with multiple personality disorder.
Chipper Chat
(9,693 posts)Back in 1985 I think