“Exaggerating is Exaggerating, Lying is Lying”: Walker Widely Panned for Repeatedly Lying About Education

Scrutiny of Herschel Walker’s record continues following a new report from CNN showing that the Trump-tapped candidate has been lying about his personal record and academic achievements for years. Last month, massive lies in the Trump-tapped candidate’s business record were put on full display, and earlier this week a new report found that Walker “repeatedly exaggerated” and “misled the public” about the scope of his former role on the President’s Council of Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition.  

Read up on the latest wave of Walker criticism below:

CNN: GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker has been overstating his academic achievements for years

• For years, Herschel Walker has told the same inspiring story: that he graduated in the top 1% of his class at the University of Georgia. He’s told the story, according to a review of his speeches by CNN’s KFile, during motivational speeches over the years and as recently as 2017. The only problem: it’s not true.
• Walker, who is a candidate in the Republican primary race for US Senate in Georgia, acknowledged in December that he did not graduate from Georgia after the Atlanta-Journal Constitution first reported that the false claim was listed on his campaign website.
• But a CNN KFile review found that Walker himself has been repeating the claim for years. Walker’s comments in 2017, and others made over the years, show the former football star repeatedly misrepresented his academic credentials.
• “And all of sudden I started going to the library, getting books, standing in front of a mirror reading to myself,” Walker said in a 2017 motivational speech. “So that Herschel that all the kids said was retarded become valedictorian of his class. 
• Walker also made the claim in another interview in 2017.
• “I also was in the top 1% of my graduating class of college,” Walker told Sirius XM radio.
• Walker did not graduate from Georgia, where he was a star running back after entering as a prized high school recruit. A profile of Walker from 1982 in the Christian-Science Monitor and an article in The New York Times said he maintained a B average at the school. Walker himself told The Chicago Tribune in 1985 he maintained a 3.0 before his grades dropped. He left to play professional football before graduating and, though having repeatedly said he was returning to obtain his degree, he never received a diploma.
• The Walker campaign did not provide proof of Walker’s claims when asked by CNN, but they defended his record as a professional athlete.
• Walker is endorsed by former President Donald Trump and is expected to be the Republican nominee to run against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in November.
• The claim was removed from his website between December and January, according to screenshots from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
• That was not the only claim about Walker’s education that was adjusted on his website at the time. After a review of the revised site, CNN’s KFile found another little-noticed claim was removed that said Walker graduated valedictorian of his high school. The website now says that Walker graduated “top of his class.” The claim still remains on the Heisman Winners page for Walker.
• While Walker was a top student at his high school and the president of the Beta Club — he maintained an “A” average to be in the school’s Beta Club — CNN’s Kfile found no evidence he was the class valedictorian.
• Walker has mentioned in numerous speeches over the years, including in the 2017 speech where he claimed to have graduated in the top 1% of his college class, and in his 2008 autobiography that he was class valedictorian at Johnson County High School. The street where Johnson County High School resides was officially renamed “Herschel Walker Drive” in 2017 in honor of Walker’s football achievements.
• “If I’m proud of anything I did in my high school career, it’s what I did in the classroom that I reflect on and relish the most. I did more than just shed the “stupid” label placed on me as a result of my speech impediment. I shed it, erased it, and rewrote it with the titles: Beta Club president and class valedictorian,” wrote Walker in his 2008 “Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder.”
• CNN’s KFile reviewed Walker’s high school yearbooks and coverage of him in local newspapers at the time.
• According to the local newspaper The Wrightsville Headlight, at Walker’s 1980 graduation he was not given the award for the student with the highest GPA in any academic subject. He did tie with another student for a leadership award based on participation in clubs and his GPA, and won numerous awards that year for his football achievements. While Walker was one of the ceremony’s honor graduates, the article does not mention the school naming a valedictorian or a salutatorian.
• A 15-year review of local press coverage did not find the school naming a valedictorian until 1994 — when the paper acknowledged the school was naming a valedictorian and salutatorian for the first time in “many years.”
• Walker’s campaign did not provide evidence that Walker graduated as his high school’s valedictorian other than pointing to news articles from the early 1980s after he began his career at the University of Georgia making the claim.
• “There is not a single voter in Georgia who believes that whether Herschel graduated at the ‘top of his class’ or as Valedictorian 40 years ago has any bearing on his ability to be a great United States Senator,” Mallory Blount, communications director for the campaign, said in a statement.
• The campaign also did not provide an explanation for why it removed the claim that Walker was valedictorian from his website. When repeatedly asked if the campaign stood by the since-removed claim from his website, the Walker’s campaign manager Scott Paradise sent the same statement three times in a row which did not address KFile’s questions.
• “Multiple reporters wrote about this 40 years ago. If you have a problem with what they wrote, please contact them. If you have a difficult time getting in touch with them, ask yourself why you are asking such a stupid question,” said Paradise to CNN.
• Johnson County Schools declined to comment and directed questions to Walker’s campaign when asked if they named a valedictorian that year or if Walker was the top student.
• It’s unclear when Walker began claiming he graduated from Georgia, and press accounts began listing him as returning to get his degree as early as 1983 after he left to join the United States Football League, a rival to the National Football League in the 1980s. Walker joined the New Jersey Generals, which was owned by then-businessman Trump. Over the years, Walker repeatedly told interviewers he had gone back to Georgia during the off-season to take classes. A 1986 article from The Dallas Morning News on his football career states Walker completed his degree in criminal justice and features a quote from Walker talking about his degree.
• “Getting a degree is one of the paths you can take on the way to becoming an FBI man,” Walker said. “Of course, my life is not going in that direction right now, but I think police work, especially the FBI, would be my choice if I wasn’t a pro football player.”
• Speaking on a YouTube show in 2008, following the release of his book, Walker told the interviewer he went back to get his college degree from University of Georgia
• “You know it was said whether I leave or stay in school. It came up that I leave — and what was weird about that is people said, ‘Why would you leave college so early?’ And that’s like guys, ‘I went back to get my degree which is what you’re supposed to do.'”
• Press reports from the time of the book’s publication listed Walker’s website for his book and subsequent speaking on mental health as HerschelWalker.net — which also said Walker returned to college and completed his degree.
• The claim is brought up in interviews with Walker, on at least two separate occasions — with the host saying he returned to get his degree. In neither instance did Walker correct interviewers.

New York Times (Opinion): Herschel Walker, the Worst Candidate, Trump-Approved

• Let’s just be blunt. No one, and I mean not one person, would seriously believe that Herschel Walker, the former football star and current leading contender for the Republican Senate nomination in Georgia, was at the top of his class at the University of Georgia.

• Yet Walker has claimed just that for years, saying multiple times that he graduated in the top 1 percent of his class.

• As CNN reported Friday, Walker never graduated from college. He left to play professional football. Furthermore, according to CNN: “A profile of Walker from 1982 in The Christian-Science Monitor and an article in The New York Times said he maintained a B average at the school. Walker himself told The Chicago Tribune in 1985 he maintained a 3.0 before his grades dropped.”

• But wait, that wasn’t the only problematic boast Walker made about his grades.

• In his 2008 book about suffering from dissociative identity disorder, Walker says that he grew up as a “fat kid” who stuttered (twin “sins” in his judgment), that his teachers looked through him as if he hadn’t been there and that the older children ridiculed him as “stupid.”

• But, Walker wrote: “If I’m proud of anything I did in my high school career, it’s what I did in the classroom that I reflect on and relish the most. I did more than just shed the ‘stupid’ label placed on me as a result of my speech impediment. I shed it, erased it and rewrote it with the titles: Beta Club president and class valedictorian.”

• CNN’s KFile reviewed Walker’s high school yearbooks and coverage of him in local newspapers at the time and could find no evidence to support the claim that he was a high school valedictorian.

• No one wants to be insensitive about a speech impediment or any other disorder, but exaggerating is exaggerating, and lying is lying. It goes to the character of the man much more than any physical or psychological condition.

• His consistent record of inflating his academic credentials isn’t the only thing to suggest that he’s highly problematic.

MSNBC: Herschel Walker’s latest fumble is over his education

• After retiring from professional athletics, Herschel Walker has held a handful of different jobs, including working as a paid motivational speaker. As part of these speeches, he’s told audiences about how he turned his life around as a young man, became an avid reader, was valedictorian at his high school, and went on to graduate from the University of Georgia in the top 1 percent of his class.
  
• That is, to be sure, a great story. As CNN reported, it’s just not a true story.
  
• Walker, who is a candidate in the Republican primary race for US Senate in Georgia, acknowledged in December that he did not graduate from Georgia after the Atlanta-Journal Constitution first reported that the false claim was listed on his campaign website.
  
• But a CNN KFile review found that Walker himself has been repeating the claim for years. Walker’s comments in 2017, and others made over the years, show the former football star repeatedly misrepresented his academic credentials.
  
• This is not a situation in which Walker simply misspoke at a public event or two. Rather, the Republican repeatedly claimed in a variety of forums that he was his high school’s valedictorian, received a degree from the University of Georgia, and graduated in the top 1 percent of his class. It now appears none of these claims is true, and his aides provided no evidence to bolster the dubious assertions.
  
• The question, however, is why Walker routinely made claims about his educational background that don’t stand up to scrutiny.
  
• The trouble is, because Walker is a first-time candidate with no meaningful background in public service, all the public has to go on is his record — and it’s not faring especially well.
  
• It’s become obvious, for example, that the Georgia Republican knows effectively nothing about public affairs. Voters have also learned about allegations of domestic violence and other dangerous personal behavior. His failures as a businessman have also been well documented.

Rolling Stone: Turns Out Herschel Walker, Who Questioned How Evolution Is Possible, Repeatedly Lied About His Academic Record

• Herschel Walker, the former star running back who is now former President Trump’s pick for Senate in Georgia, repeatedly lied about his academic background, a CNN report found.

• Walker in December admitted that he did not graduate from the University of Georgia after the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported that he claimed to have done so on his website. It turns out, however, that this wasn’t the only time Walker had lied about graduating. CNN found that he also made the claim during a 2017 motivational speech, and during an interview on Sirius XM radio the same year. He alleged that he not only graduated, but graduated in the top one percent of the class.

• Walker left Georgia early to play in the United States Football League, and then the NFL. CNN cites stories from the time in which Walker said he maintained a B average at the school, and that he told the Chicago Tribune a few years later that he had a 3.0 GPA before his grades fell off.

• CNN says Walker’s campaign did not offer any proof of his claim that he graduated in the top one percent of his class.

Salon: GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker lied about his college achievements

• For years now, GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker has boasted about graduating in the top 1% of his class at the University of Georgia; but recent evidence has come to light indicating that he actually didn’t graduate at all.

• Walker, a retired football player and winner of the 1982 Heisman Trophy, officially filed paperwork to run for U.S. Senate In Georgia in the summer of 2021. As a longtime friend and supporter of former President Trump, he received his immediate sign-off and has appeared alongside him at rallies and functions, including the most recent “Save America Tour.”

• The discovery that Walker’s claim to have excelled in college was false also came to light via exposure by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. In December of 2021 Walker admitted to the publication that his boast was a false one, yet it still pops up from time to time.

• Although any mention of collegiate achievements has since been scrubbed from Walker’s campaign media sometime between December and January, it’s unclear why the claim was made in the first place, or why there have been instances as recent as 2017 when the claim has been made.

• “And all of sudden I started going to the library, getting books, standing in front of a mirror reading to myself,” Walker said in a 2017 motivational speech. “So that Herschel that all the kids said was retarded become valedictorian of his class. Graduated University of Georgia in the top 1% of his class.”

The Guardian: Republican Senate hopeful overstated academic achievements for years

• A Republican Senate candidate in Georgia said for years that he graduated in the top 1% of his university’s class – but actually never graduated college at all.

• Herschel Walker, a former pro football player who is running as a Republican in Georgia’s US Senate primary, has publicly stated multiple times that he graduated in the top 1% of his class at University of Georgia despite never completing his degree.

• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) first reported on Walker lying about his college degree in December 2021. Walker later deleted the claim from his campaign website and released a statement to AJC acknowledging that he never graduated.

• But Walker has actually been misrepresenting his academic achievements for years in interviews and motivational speeches, as recently as 2017, according to an investigation by CNN.

• In a speech from that year, Walker said: “And all of sudden I started going to the library, getting books, standing in front of a mirror reading to myself. So that Herschel, that all the kids said was retarded, become valedictorian of his class. Graduated University of Georgia in the top 1% of his class.”

• Walker repeated those claims in a 2017 interview with Sirius XM radio: “I also was valedictorian of my class. I also was in the top 1% of my graduating class of college.”

• Walker never received a diploma from the University of Georgia.

• Walker’s campaign was not able to provide proof that he graduated from the University of Georgia to CNN, but did defend his athletic record.

• CNN found that Walker also repeated false claims about his academic achievements in high school. Walker has said on multiple occasions that he was valedictorian of his high school class. 

• CNN also found no evidence that his high school even named a valedictorian or salutatorian until 1994, after Walker had graduated.

• Walker’s campaign could not verify that Walker was his high school valedictorian, but did provide comment on Walker overstating his high school achievements to CNN.

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