Georgia GOP senatorial nominee Herschel Walker is doubling down on his denials he paid a girlfriend to have an abortion, emphatically insisting he knows “nothing” about it – after saying, “why in the world would I not be forgiven of something like that?” and insisting it’s “nothing to be ashamed of” – despite wanting to criminalize and ban all abortion.
Walker Thursday morning spoke with right wing propagandist Hugh Hewitt and suggested he’s been “forgiven,” in the biblical sense, of paying his girlfriend to have an abortion, only to backtrack moments later.
“The Daily Beast has updated the story about your paying for a woman’s abortion,” Hewitt began. “The anonymous woman has now also alleged that she had a child by you. Your response?”
“I say the same thing I said, that you know, I know this is untrue. I know it’s untrue, and they keep telling me things like that, and it’s totally, totally untrue. And I’m not sure why that would be told. I know nothing about any woman having an abortion,” Walker insisted. “And they can keep coming at me like that, and they’re doing it because they want to distract people.”
“I know that, because you know, I’ve already been forgiven,” Walker said, in a nod to Christianity. “And if I’ve been forgiven, why in the world would I not be forgiven of something like that?”
Hewitt, appearing to help Walker along, asked, “Is there anything you need to be forgiven for vis-à-vis a woman whose name we do not know? Do you know who this woman is? And do you need to be forgiven?”
“No,” Walker again insisted. “And I’m saying I’ve been forgiven because of all of the things I did when I went to my, the thing with my ex-wife and all that, and things I did I don’t know how many years ago that I wrote in my book. I forgot. I wasn’t perfect. I had my problem with mental health,” he said once again describing it as something in the past.
But Walker, who is campaigning as a candidate who is against all abortion for any reason, including rape, incest, health or life of the mother, says abortion is “nothing to be ashamed of.”
“And I was, I’ve been, I hate to say I’ve been born again, but I have a new life. And I’ve been moving forward, and had that happened, I would have said it, because it’s nothing to be ashamed of there. You know, people have done that, but I know nothing about it. And if I knew about it, I would be honest and talk about it, but I know nothing about that.”
In May The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported “Walker promised to ‘protect the unborn with my life … because I believe from the womb to the tomb.'”
Wednesday night The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger published a second piece on Walker paying for his girlfriend’s abortion, this time with the woman revealing she is the mother of one of Walker’s four known children. She told The Daily beast she was angry that Walker lied about paying for her aborton, saying he “urged” her to have it.
“Sure, I was stunned, but I guess it also doesn’t shock me, that maybe there are just so many of us that he truly doesn’t remember,” the woman told The Daily Beast. “But then again, if he really forgot about it, that says something, too.”
“I’ve been very civil thus far. I keep my mouth shut. I don’t cause any trouble. I stay in the background. But I’m also not gonna get run over time and time again,” she added. “That’s crazy.”
The woman, who is keeping her name out of the press for obvious family reasons, “said Walker frequently talked about being a Christian, but never once expressed any misgivings about abortion generally—or any regret about the one that they had. When she got pregnant again years later, the woman says she made a different choice, even though Walker said it still wasn’t ‘a convenient time’ for him.”
She says Walker “didn’t express any regret” about her having had the abortion.
“He seemed pretty pro-choice to me. He was pro-choice, obviously,” she said.
She also “said even though Walker often talked about Christianity, he uses it ‘when it works for him.'”
It worked for him Wednesday evening, when Walker’s campaign posted a new ad in which Walker does not address the abortion allegations at all, but rather talks about his mental health issues, claiming “by the grave of God” he has “overcome” them.
Watch a clip of Walker’s interview with Hewitt below or at this link.