Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely Republican presidential candidate, is set to return Friday from his second trip to Europe in recent months. This time he’ll be coming back without having faced any questions from reporters about evolution theory — or any media questions at all.
The only public event scheduled for Walker’s week-long trip — it’s billed by his office as a “trade mission” — was a 15-minute speech he delivered Tuesday in Germany, in which he discussed trade between that country and the Badger State.
And in a stark contrast to the coast-to-coast media frenzy that erupted after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited an Ohio Chipotle earlier this week, no national media have even noticed Walker is gone.
Walker did not take questions from media at the event. His remaining meetings with trade and industry leaders are not open to press.
A spokesman for the governor’s office did not return a request for comment from the Washington Examiner media desk on why Walker is not engaging press while overseas.
Other than some reports that anticipated the trip, no national news outlets have covered Walker’s mid-spring trip to Europe, where he is visiting Germany, Spain and France.
Walker’s last trip across the Atlantic Ocean came in February, when he visited London. The trip was marred by Walker’s “punt” on a question about evolution during a public Q&A with a British moderator. “That’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or another,” Walker said at the time, leading critics on the left to accuse him of not believing the theory of natural selection.
Walker is not the only potential Republican presidential candidate who has stumbled overseas.
During a United Kingdom tour in February, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie briefly suggested parents should have a choice when asked whether the federal government should force them to vaccinate their children. The Garden State governor, who trails Walker by ten points in a RealClearPolitics average of polling on Republican presidential candidates, quickly walked back that suggestion, and he canceled three press conferences planned for the following day.
A month earlier, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, without being able to cite evidence, claimed in a speech that there are Muslim-controlled “no-go zones” throughout Europe. The claim was repeated by guests on Fox News and CNN, for which both networks apologized.
