For years, he repeated the same story everywhere: He was first in his class in high school before graduating from college among the best in his class. A plain and simple lie. Pressed by journalists, Herschel Walker, a Republican candidate for a senator’s seat in Georgia, admitted that he had embellished his CV. This black sexagenarian, ex-American football star, not only never shone in class but dropped out of college to join a professional team. And that’s not all. At the end of the 1980s, depressed by the decline of his career, he tells in an interview that he started playing Russian roulette, alone in his kitchen. Above all, he becomes more and more violent…
His wife accuses him of threatening him with death with a razor and a gun on several occasions, so much so that after their divorce, she asks for a protective order. In his memoirs, he writes that one day, furious with a guy who was slow to bring him a car, he decides to shoot him. He imagines, he says, the “visceral pleasure” he will feel when he shoots her, seeing “the display of brains and blood, like a firework of the 4th of July (the holiday American National, Editor’s note), exploding behind him”. He ends up giving it up. Walker also brags about his business successes but again, he racks up failures.
Encouraged by Donald Trump, a long-time acquaintance, he entered politics when he had never voted. Like his mentor, he shows ignorance and peddles all sorts of smoky theories. “Science says that humans descended from monkeys… but if that’s true why are there still monkeys?” he says. And yet, Herschel Walker has a good chance of winning the Republican primaries on May 24, thanks in part to the support of the former president who propelled him in the polls and attracted him a financial windfall.
The dubbing of Trump
Donald Trump has become a kingmaker. He has personally pledged to support some 150 candidates in the local and national elections, whose victory he sees as a guarantee of his popularity. His goal is to increase his hold on the Party and become essential for the presidential elections of 2024. So far, he can boast. His Senate, House, and gubernatorial favorites have won 39 of 40 Republican polls in 2022. the Brookings Institution. No wonder candidates line up at Mar-a-Lago to get dubbed.
Obviously the statistics are a little distorted because for 33 of them it was a re-election without really any credible opponents. But the influence of the ex-president proved crucial in Ohio, for example, where Donald Trump chose JD Vance among the many Republicans who courted him. This financier and author of a bestseller on the history of his family was given moribund three weeks before the election. Thanks to Trump’s support, he magically took twelve points in the polls and benefited from an influx of funds, particularly from tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who assured him of victory. The intervention of the good fairy Trump also allowed his candidate for the Chamber in West Virginia to win among the Republicans.
This week, the ex-president still suffered a defeat in Nebraska. Charles Herbster, who made his fortune in bull semen, lost the primaries for a gubernatorial seat. Is this a sign that Trump’s omnipotence has limits? For political analysts, it’s more that Herbster had a lot of pots. No less than eight women accused him of sexual touching.
“The Republican Party is still Trump’s party”
Its influence will be truly tested in the weeks to come. In particular in Pennsylvania, where the ballot promises to be tight. To everyone’s surprise and against the advice of his advisers, Donald Trump announced that he was supporting Mehmet Oz, a very controversial figure and novice in politics. This cathodic doctor of Turkish origin hosted for years a popular health program that promoted treatments that were not always very scientific.
Then there will be Georgia, where if Herschel Walker seems well positioned, David Perdue, who is aiming for the post of governor, has not yet benefited from the Trump effect and is trailing in the polls.
In a sense, even if all his foals are not elected, the ex-president can already triumph. “These elections have helped highlight the fact that in both style and substance, the current Republican Party remains Trump’s party,” said Cook Political Report analyst Amy Walker. Throughout speeches and pubs, all the candidates, including those to whom he refused his support, present themselves as his clone, sing his praises and promise to follow his ideas to the letter. It remains to be seen whether by dint of being trumpified, they are not likely to alienate moderate voters who will prefer a Democrat to them in November.