Former Republican National Chairman Michael Steele does not believe Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker is qualified to be a senator, calling out Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) specifically for his support of Walker.
During a rally for Walker, Graham said Walker, if elected, will change the entire narrative of the Republican Party being called racist.
“What happens when the Republican Party elects and nominates Herschel Walker — an African American, Black, Heisman Trophy winner, right, Olympian — it destroys the whole narrative,” Graham said.
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He later added that Democrats are “scared to death of Herschel Walker, because if Herschel Walker becomes a Republican, maybe every other young child in America of color might want to be a Republican.”
Walker stood by silently during the speech — something Steele said during an MSNBC interview that he had a “gut-wrenching feeling” about.
He said Walker should not need a “white man to come to his defense” in order to prove he is the best candidate.
“He should be able to stand on his own two feet and make his case, but he can’t and that’s the problem,” he said. “And they know he can’t because he hasn’t.”
Walker, who has campaigned on a staunchly anti-abortion platform, is the face of several recent allegations, reported by the Daily Beast earlier this month, that he paid a former girlfriend for an abortion. The accusation was magnified Wednesday after a second woman came forward alleging that Walker had pressured her to end her pregnancy.
Steele added that watching the Republicans bring out Graham to support Walker was “heartbreaking and very disturbing to watch.”
“The reality of it is, Lindsey knows damn well that if you change Herschel’s skin color, he is no more the nominee for the Republican Party in Georgia than I am, and I don’t live in Georgia,” he said. “The point is, why are you doing this?”
He pointed to the comparison of health issues between Walker and John Fetterman, who gained national attention due to having a stroke in May and continues to be on the road to recovery. He has been open about the way his stroke impacts his ability to perform in certain areas, evident most recently in a debate with his opponent, Mehmet Oz.
Walker has also been open about his struggles with mental health and history with dissociative identity disorder. In a book in 2008, he acknowledges a past of “violent urges,” including playing Russian roulette and pointing a loaded gun at his head, per the Associated Press.
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Steele said Republicans want to disqualify Fetterman for having a stroke, but they don’t want to talk about the “obvious mental health concerns that Walker himself said he had.”
“So [Republicans] just want to do the, you know, ‘they’re coming after him because he’s a black Republican,'” Steele said. “No, he’s not qualified for the job, Lindsey.”
