Georgia Senate candidate defends right-wing pundit son with history of extreme comments

On Sunday, Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker told Fox Business that he “believes in” his son, Christian Walker, a right-wing pundit who has frequently attacked Black victims of police violence.

Walker, a former college football and NFL player, is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia in 2022.

Walker’s candidacy is being championed by former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed his campaign. The Cook Political Report rates the race as “lean Democrat,” while an August poll from Public Policy Polling showed Warnock leading Walker 48% to 46%, within the poll’s 3.9% margin of error.

On the program “Sunday Morning Futures,” host Maria Bartiromo asked Walker if his son would be a part of his Senate campaign.

Walker responded:

He’s always going to be campaigning for me, because you know Christian, I love him to death, you know he has his way of saying things and sometimes we may disagree the way he says it, but I believe in everything that he’s said, and he just says it a little more tougher than I do.

Walker also said his son “will join in later and help me out” during the campaign.

Christian Walker is a conservative pundit and activist who has over 419,000 followers on Instagram, more than 153,000 followers on Twitter, and has a TikTok following of over 400,000 on an account that was reinstated after a temporary suspension. He also hosts a podcast called “Uncancellable.”

On his accounts, Walker frequently attacks the left and has focused his most virulent attacks on Black people affected by police brutality and those protesting against such violence.

The Log Cabin Republicans released a video on Aug. 31, 2020, attacking the Black Lives Matter movement and starring Walker, in which he said it was “the KKK in blackface.”

On Aug. 24, 2020, the day after a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot and wounded Jacob Blake, a Black man, Walker criticized widespread protests against police brutality that followed.

“Stop requiring black people to stand for these ghetto trash black criminals. My blackness has nothing to do with your inability to follow the law,” Walker wrote on Twitter. “Respect our police, and stop acting like a misbehaved child.” It was one of many comments arguing that Blake was responsible for being shot by police.

Blake was left paralyzed from the waist down after being shot in the back seven times as his three young children watched. The officer who shot him said he believed he was about to be stabbed by Blake and ultimately returned to duty without being charged or disciplined.

In response to protests in Kenosha, Walker described Black Lives Matter as a “terrorist group” that “thinks they get an excuse to burn Kenosha down.”

“Rename yourself CRIMINAL LIVES,” he wrote.

In a tweet directed toward Black Americans that same day, Walker wrote, “Stop crying about white people, YOU ARE YOUR OWN OPPRESSOR.”

Later, in December 2020, Walker returned to the topic. “Breonna Taylor and George Floyd were career criminals,” he wrote.

George Floyd, a Black man, was killed in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, after police officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, kneeled on his neck for nine minutes as a handcuffed Floyd stated over 20 times that he could not breathe. Chauvin was later convicted of murder and sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison for the crime.

Breonna Taylor, who was Black, was killed in Louisville, Kentucky, in March of 2020 after three white police officers forced entry into the apartment she shared with her boyfriend and shot Taylor six times. One affiliated police detective was later indicted on charges of reckless endangerment related to the case, but the two officers who shot and killed Taylor did not face charges.

An earlier version of this story stated that Christian Walker’s TikTok account had been suspended. It has been corrected to note that the suspension was temporary.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.