Herschel Walker Trending Again For All the Wrong Reasons

It’s only Tuesday, and Herschel Walker’s week is already off to a rocky start following new reporting from GPB News raising “red flags” about potential “conflicts of interests” in his federal personal financial disclosure, intense scrutiny from Georgia Republicans for no-showing the GOP debates, fumbling questions about U.S. energy policy, and increasing coverage of the lies he’s pushed about his academic record.

In case you missed it, here are just a few of the stories that have Walker trending for all the wrong reasons this week:

Georgia Public Broadcasting: Ethics experts say Herschel Walker’s U.S. Senate financial disclosure bears further scrutiny

• Trump-backed Georgia Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker’s personal financial disclosure is missing key information that could help voters spot potential conflicts of interests if elected, several campaign finance experts say.
  
• A review of Walker’s financial disclosure shows inconsistencies in reporting sources of income and positions (both compensated and uncompensated) held, as well as a failure to list any sources that paid Walker more than $5,000 in 2020 and 2021.
  
• Three campaign finance and government ethics experts who reviewed Walker’s disclosures said the lack of required information could prevent voters from understanding potential conflicts of interests if he becomes a U.S. senator.
  
• All three also had questions about H. Walker Enterprises LLC, Walker’s flagship company, which has a reported value of between $25 million and $50 million and netted him more than $3 million in shareholder income from 2020 to 2021.
  
• The business is listed on the disclosure form as “business consulting and professional services.” But without a listing of clients that might have paid Walker or the company more than $5,000, the true picture of Walker’s finance is incomplete, said Stephen Spaulding with government watchdog group Common Cause.
  
• […]  “This may raise questions for voters trying to screen for conflicts of interest who want to know more about who got what from the consulting and professional consulting firm that bears his name and pays him millions in shareholder income.”
  
• A spokeswoman for Walker’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment or clarification about his financial disclosure and H. Walker Enterprises.
  
• […] “It raises questions when we’re at the candidate phase of if they’re going to be forthcoming with this information when they’re actually in charge,” [Delaney Marsco, senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center] said. “If they actually get elected, how much information are we going to get when there’s policy on the line?”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Herschel Walker’s no-show looms large over Senate GOP debate​​

• Each of Walker’s top rivals criticized the GOP frontrunner for skipping the event and predicted that his strategy, which involves a regimen of mostly tightly scripted events and private gatherings, would leave him vulnerable against Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock.
  
• […] “I’m also certain that every coach that he had in the past instructed him that you’ll not play in the game if you don’t show up for practice,” said Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, Walker’s best-known GOP rival. “But his coaches now have him locked in the basement of the locker room. I think it’s a shame.”

• Since entering the race last year with Trump’s support, Walker has ignored his rivals and bypassed many large GOP gatherings, even if it meant alienating key activists and officials. He’s also indicated he won’t participate in debates until the general election.
  
• In this instance, Walker cited the Horatio Alger Award ceremony in Washington as a scheduling conflict. The event ended Saturday morning, hours before the evening debate.
  
• […] “Mr. Walker not showing up and not making himself available to the people of Georgia is not serving the people of Georgia,” said Kelvin King, a contractor and military veteran. “This is an interview process and if you don’t show up for the interview process you don’t get the job.”

MSNBC: Why Herschel Walker’s fumble on energy policy matters

• Host Maria Bartiromo certainly offered the Republican an opportunity to prove his qualifications, asking what’s changed since Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock won his Senate seat early last year. Walker rambled a bit before sharing these insights with viewers:
• “We have got an administration that is — that they’re not leaders. They’re almost — they’re waiting to — they’re more reactive, rather than proactive. And what I mean by that is, one of the first thing they did — and I think people need to know this — is they decided that they were going to give up our energy. By him going out giving up our energy, and now we’re not energy-independent anymore, which started the whole downfall.”
• As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones put it, Walker “delivered a meandering response that was detached from reality and syntax.”
• In this case, Walker was likely told about partisan talking points referring to “energy independence,” which led him to believe U.S. officials “gave up our energy.” That’s wrong and nonsensical. In reality, the United States is still a net energy exporter. That was true before President Joe Biden took office, and it’s still true now.
  
• […] To be sure, many of the issues plaguing Walker’s Senate candidacy have nothing to do with what he’s said. Circling back to our earlier coverage, it’s become obvious, for example, that the Georgia Republican knows effectively nothing about public affairs. His failures as a businessman have also been well documented. He hasn’t even told the truth about his educational background.
  
• But his rhetoric certainly hasn’t helped.
  
• Late last year, the first-time candidate tried to argue that the late-Rep. John Lewis was a senator who’d oppose the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. We learned soon after that Walker had falsely claimed the FDA had approved an unproven “dry mist” mystery treatment for Covid-19. The Republican then said it was “totally unfair“ to ask for his opinion about the bipartisan infrastructure law.
  
• Last month, Walker suggested the existence of apes calls evolutionary biology into question and seemed to argue that in-vitro fertilization doesn’t work “because there has to be a God.”
  
• There’s a reason the Georgian’s campaign team has tried to limit the retired football player’s public appearances and kept Walker “largely behind closed doors.”

The Root: WTF Is Herschel Walker Talking About?

• For as much time as he’s spent campaigning in the Republican primary there, he skipped the first debate against his competitors, leaving them to take as many shots at him as possible with no rebuttal. That might be because his campaign advisers, whoever they are, knew that no rebuttal was better than the verbal shitshow he let loose last weekend in an interview with Fox News’ Maria Baritoromo.

• My head already exploded from sitting through all nine minutes of this mess, so I’ll save you the aggravation. Walker says, among other things, that the Biden Administration “decided that they were going to give up our energy,” to whom and how and for what, he doesn’t specify, and that “there’s no food on the shelf”—which is odd because…I’m not sure where Walker shops, but he can definitely afford to go to places that keep food in stock.

• He continued: “This is one of the most environmental drilling countries in the world but yet we’re walking on all the resources we have under our feet and we won’t say, ‘Hey, guys, we gotta come out of this.”

• Huh?

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. Graduated University of Georgia in the top 1% 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. […]

• 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.

When asked about his academic lie, Walker doubles down and says journalists asking questions are “getting jealous of me”:

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