ATLANTA (AP) — After spending months arguing that Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker is “not ready” for high elected office, Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia is intensifying his critique ahead of Election Day to say the celebrity athlete is fundamentally unfit for Capitol Hill.
From a rally with former President Barack Obama to a statewide bus tour that runs through the eve of Election Day on Tuesday, Warnock has hammered Walker as a “pathological liar” who has exaggerated his business, academic, professional and philanthropic achievements and been accused of violence against his family members and of paying for girlfriends’ abortions despite his public opposition to the procedure.
“This is a man who lies about the most basic facts of his life,” Warnock said on a stage he shared with Obama. “And now he wants the rest of us … to somehow imagine now that he’s a United States senator. … Herschel Walker is not ready. He’s not ready. Not only is he not ready. He’s not fit.”
Walker, who denies he’s ever paid for any abortions, is sticking to an argument he’s made for months: that Warnock is a rubber stamp for President Joe Biden and a Democratic congressional majority that Walker blames for inflation, rising crime and a continued flow of immigrants across the U.S. border with Mexico.
“He talked about I’m not ready. No, you’re not ready,” Walker answered Thursday in suburban Atlanta. “Because you either voted with Joe Biden 96% of the time, or you had no clue what you were doing. You pick which one you want — no clue of what you’re doing or you voted with him 96% of the time which is headed in the wrong direction.”