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Jared and Nick discuss the latest revelations that Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker paid for an abortion, and possibly has fathered even more children than we know of - all from someone running on religious family values.
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Welcome to a big old Birthday Weekender edition of the Monk Creek Podcast.
I'm the Birthday Boy, Jared Yates Sexton.
Nick Halseman.
How you doing, buddy?
Really, really good.
I get to be the Birthday Boy in a couple more days.
That's right.
We're birthday monthers together.
That means that we probably shouldn't get along, right, these fellow Libra travelers?
What?
Libras don't get along?
Is that what people think?
I don't know.
I've just been trained to think that the opposite signs are the ones that seem to get along the best.
Interesting.
This is all fascinating.
I don't know.
And I'm sitting here, by the way, we're recording this earlier in the morning because Nick is still out on the highways and byways of America.
I'm nursing a cup of coffee.
Do you not drink coffee?
Have we talked about this?
Yeah, no, I don't.
I never drink coffee.
Never had it.
You don't drink coffee at all?
No, I mean, maybe I've tasted it once.
Don't like it.
Sorry.
Sorry, not sorry.
Wait, what?
You've tasted it once?
Yeah, I think I had it like, you know, I was tired so I'm gonna get here.
But it was, yeah, no thanks.
I don't know how we've done this podcast now for years, and I'm still learning the weirdest things about you.
I think I've tasted it once.
How did you get out of bed?
What do you do?
I guess I'm slightly a morning person.
You know what it is?
Once I get out of bed and once I'm upright, then I'm like, I can make it happen.
It's just, you know, it's something about the blood moving up vertically that helps me better.
I don't know.
Now, not to say I don't drink, like, Coke, even though I've tried to eliminate it from my life, you know, every other day.
This is incredible.
And by the way, if you were listening to the preview of this and you're like, man, this is a dynamite podcast.
You need to go over to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast.
Well, the other part of that is, is that we have this awesome Discord discussion and you know that everyone's going to be flying in there about the science and the astrological stuff too.
No, they're going to be flying in there talking about you having had coffee once and not liked it.
That's That's absurd!
But speaking in absurd, listen, you all know what this first segment is going to be.
You're all aware what we're going to talk about.
It pisses me off in every single way how not surprising and predictable and repulsive this is.
Nick, I don't know if while you've been traveling, if you've heard the news.
Georgia Senate candidate, former Heisman Trophy winner, Herschel Walker.
I just have here on my segment rundown, Herschel Walker, Jesus Christ.
Turns out, paid for an abortion in 2009, a friend of the pod, Roger Solleberger of the Daily Beast.
Roger, by the way, is going to haunt Herschel Walker for the rest of his life.
It is non-stop Investigative reporting, old school gumshoe stuff.
Walker is both denying it and weirdly apologizing for it, saying he doesn't know this woman.
Today, by the way, it's come out, turns out that woman is the mother of one of his children.
So I don't know, Nick.
We got a lot to unpack here.
We got to talk about the Republican response.
What are your initial reactions on this thing?
Well, I gotta tell you, I spent all morning going through this.
I missed this headline that the woman who got the card is also a woman of another child of his.
Okay.
Yeah.
And I feel bad for Roger because, you know, he has to go back out there and go, you know, with the big, what's the emoji for the shrug?
Like, they've already confirmed all this stuff.
And his campaign manager has confirmed everything he's reported.
So there's this bizarre disconnect which, you know, leads to a lot of probably sort of serious mental health issues that we're discussing when it comes to Hershel Walker with a long history of things we could talk about.
But nobody cares, or at least the Republicans don't care.
I'll say this, my initial reaction to all this, and we'll get into the political ramifications in a moment, or lack thereof, there's no reason that this woman should have to talk about this.
There's no reason whatsoever that this is public knowledge.
There's no reason whatsoever that this is now a subject of national conversation, except for one thing and one thing only, which is Herschel Walker wanted to run for the Senate, was convinced to do so and motivated to do so by Donald Trump in order to carry out his MAGA agenda and basically populate the houses of power with his supporters and sycophants.
Herschel Walker is not well.
Hershel Walker should not be running for office.
Hershel Walker should be in therapy somewhere and working on his life.
Period.
That's it.
What have we learned about him since he declared?
We've learned that multiple times he has threatened people's lives, including people that he has been involved with, domestic abuse.
We've heard about multiple secret children.
We've now heard about this.
He's admitted, Nick, on multiple occasions wanting to kill other people.
He's lied about businesses.
He's lied about his experience with law enforcement.
This is not a well person.
This isn't a conversation that we should have.
And the fact that the Republican Party is just so openly casting off their so-called principles for this individual, this unwell, untalented, incapable individual, I think it is one of the more disgusting things, and you couldn't ask for a better representation of who these people are.
I'm not sure why this would be a newsflash, for that the GOP would be supporting someone who doesn't adhere to their family value principles.
I mean, how hard do we have to think back in the last, you know, whatever, to pick other candidates that they've been able to ignore this with?
Is it hard?
Well, I mean, literally, I wrote about this the other day.
Roy Moore.
I mean, and people want to pretend like Roy, and I don't know if you, do you know what the final, do you know how many points Roy Moore lost to Doug Jones by?
A hair.
One.
One.
One point.
One point.
Yeah.
One point.
Yeah.
I mean, listen, somebody named Donald Trump?
That was a man, and if you need a reminder, a refresher, Roy Moore, who was removed from his judgeship, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, He was accused of assault by multiple women, including underage women.
It was well known by everybody in his community that he was completely soliciting underage minors constantly.
And the Republican Party, for a moment, I don't know if you remember this, they pulled their funding for him.
And then Trump said, I endorse him.
And they're like, oh, yeah, absolutely.
Let's go.
Yeah.
This is this is who they are, period.
This is who the Republican Party is.
And if you are shocked that they're standing behind Hershel Walker, I don't even know what to tell you anymore.
Right, and they even forgot to mention that they had, you know, Roy Moore wasn't allowed to go to the mall.
It's just a matter of necessity.
They can't find anyone else to replace him.
They have to run him.
What else are you going to do?
I feel like I saw a poll recently that had Warnock comfortably ahead now.
So perhaps this is going to be moot because he won't win.
Have you seen any other polls?
Every poll that I see has Warnock up three to four points, but we also know that's the margin of error.
And on top of that, there's what I'm now going to refer to as the Trump principle, which is when you're asked who you're going to support in an election, do you want to tell the person asking who you're going to vote for because you're ashamed of it?
And we don't know.
I mean, Herschel Walker could very well win this and serve.
And I want to point out, Nick, we got to get into the reaction on this.
Can you play real fast something from Dana Loesch?
How many times have I said four very important words?
These four words.
Winning is a virtue.
What I'm about to say is in No means a contradiction or a compromise of a principle.
And please keep in mind that I am concerned about one thing and one thing only at this point.
So I don't care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles.
I want control of the Senate.
And Dana Loesch makes it obvious.
And by the way, what a perfect avatar for right-wing cynicism and just nihilistic, power-obsessed politics.
Says it straight out, I don't care what he did.
I don't actually care about abortion.
All I care about is power and control.
One of the things that you said earlier in this podcast that rings around in my head all the time, which is just, the mask is off.
And it is!
There's not even a mask.
They can't even pretend at this point.
They're making like a little bit of an effort to pretend like maybe it's fake news and maybe it's a made-up story, but they can't even get up for that.
You know what I mean?
Like this is just a... It's as cynical of a brand of politics as I think we're likely to see, honestly.
I agree, especially because you're dealing with things like abortion, which is this supposed red-hot button issue.
And it's weird, because in theory, should we be celebrating that he Supported someone's abortion?
Like, it's a strange... The Republicans could probably spin this in a way that would help them, because, you know, in reality, like, she had a choice that she had to make.
I'm sure it was very difficult.
He paid for it.
Like, these are the kind of decisions that are... The way it's... We're supposed to happen that way, you know, in our society.
And now we're trying to vilify him for that.
I mean, help me get... Help me let everyone know out there where I stand and... I'm not standing for Russell Walker.
So this is the most twisted part about it because, and I've been kind of like you, I've been sort of like trying to wrap my head around, because this isn't like base level Sudoku, this is advanced level Sudoku.
You know what I mean?
Like it really is, there's so many working ethical and morality questions here.
One, I have no problem with Herschel Walker and a woman having an abortion.
I have no problem with that.
I don't have a moral or an ethical problem with that whatsoever.
I think it should be legal.
I'm glad that people get to make decisions in terms of their reproductive care.
The problem in this is that, of course, as a very, very outspoken pro-life, and again, quotes around that, candidate Herschel Walker is obviously a hypocrite and obviously is saying these things cynically in the same way that Republicans are all candidate Herschel Walker is obviously a hypocrite and obviously is saying these things cynically in the same way that Republicans are all the time, Right?
The law is there to control you, and these methods of control are about controlling you.
I'm outside of that.
I'm in a protected class.
I'm above that.
These laws are about keeping the bad people at bay.
But at the same time, Nick, something that I watched, because I know you were traveling.
Did you watch the fallout from this as it was reported, as the story broke?
I mean probably not as closely as normal but you know a little bit but you know you know so there's some gaps for me.
It ended up and listen you've seen this this play out before so this isn't going to be a total surprise immediately when this story broke and the Daily Beast said you know we have this giant story it drops I believe it was at 7 p.m.
Eastern or something you know their prime time drop.
Everybody online was like, "That's it.
"Herschel Walker's gonna have to withdraw from the race." And in a perfect world, he would withdraw from the race and he would be replaced by somebody like agricultural commissioner Gary Black, right?
The guy who ran against him to begin with.
Everybody's like, "This is it.
"Warnock's gonna get reelected." I don't know how many times Lucy has to put the football down and pull it away.
You know what I mean?
Like, we've reached this point because it's starting to feel and become something that I'm thinking about a lot, which is Democrats, I think, and liberals a lot, too, I think when it comes to politics, they're getting used to not winning races like this or having these types of races be toss-ups when they shouldn't.
and they're taking a moral victory from it, right?
Like, at least our principles are real, their principles are not real.
Like, it's almost like, you know, that moral victory idea.
And that is something that the Republican Party has just completely abandoned with gleeful, like, lack of regard.
Oh, good.
I have a really interesting point to make on this.
First of all, I believe I'm 99% sure that no one else can run at this point legally.
It either is him or he can drop out, I suppose.
But they can't replace his name on the ballot, I think is the law.
But regardless... You're probably right about that.
Yeah, because we're so close to the election now.
But here's the thing.
If you look at it from anybody's point of view on the right, as a conservative, as an evangelical, whatever you want to look at, whatever segment, their choice is between someone who would vote to protect abortion And the choice and someone who would vote to not allow that to happen.
And in their mind, that is the true moral choice.
And it's almost like it's a, it's like a chess piece on a board.
It's not, it doesn't matter who it is.
So in, in, in some respects you could, and we could have this discussion now, um, perhaps they are staying true to themselves because they know what his vote is going to be.
And it doesn't matter in one iota of us, you know, the scintilla of an issue for them that he used an abortion or he had an abortion, he paid for one or he agrees with it.
You know what I mean?
It doesn't matter.
It's just the rubber stamp in the same sense that like Clarence Thomas is a rubber stamp and all these other Republican, you know, lawmen are just rubber stamps.
Well, I'll go ahead.
And just because we are an independent podcast and we say shit that sometimes people don't like to talk about, this is very much a Dianne Feinstein situation.
Everybody knows that Dianne Feinstein is not well and that Dianne Feinstein is diminished.
They say, well, she can rely on staff.
She may not know exactly what's going on.
And by the way, the same thing happened with Strom Thurmond.
Strom Thurmond was propped up for years and had no idea what he was doing, right?
They became avatars for power.
They hit the right button when the time came, right?
Which goes ahead and blows up the idea that this is somehow or another a contest of conscience.
Right?
You are constantly thinking about everything.
You're making these determinations.
It has turned into a party-line vote.
And by the way, the award for the most incredible explanation on all of this comes from a good, good friend of the podcast, Newton Leroy Gingrich.
And this is amazing.
I want to read this quote, and then we'll get into what this means.
Newt Gingrich defended Walker saying, quote, Now that's a lot.
That's a lot in one little thing.
Let's finish the quote.
candidate in the country because he'll do more to change the Senate just by sheer presence, by his confidence, by his deep commitment to Christ." Now that's a lot.
That's a lot in one little thing.
Let's finish the quote.
"You know, he's been through a long, tough period.
He suffered a lot of concussions coming out of football." Now unpack that incredible statement.
He's literally saying this person has brain damage and he's suffering brain damage.
But guess what?
He needs to be in the Senate because being in the Senate changes the balance of power.
The first part that he says, his confidence, his deep commitment to Christ, that's the story that Newt Gingrich tells himself, right?
That will make him a good candidate.
On the other side, he's like, well, he might also have brain damage.
It is about exactly what you're saying.
It's a vote on a floor.
It's a pawn in a larger chessboard.
It's about the fact that representative politics is not what we've been told it was.
It's literally about not just power, but also the manipulation of representative politics in order to I would say that it's an insult to his mental afflictions that you would say that's why he's lying.
Smith goes to Washington.
It's not people staying up late at night weighing this or weighing that.
That's just simply not how it works. - I mean, since we're dipping into the football playing part, I would say that it's an insult to his mental afflictions that you would say that's why he's lying.
Because he's been a liar his whole career, Now, this goes way back to, and I think we mentioned this before, months ago.
I remember this, when he was playing, he tried to insist that the only thing he did to develop his body was push-ups and sit-ups.
And there isn't anybody who believes that, in the slightest.
Now, then it goes into all the other things where he was top of his class, he said, and then when he graduated from Georgia, which he needed to graduate.
So, I have a feeling that the underlying issue here is a serial line.
But again, And this is how bad we've gotten.
This is what the Republicans have done to us, where we're beyond hypocrisy.
That's not a word anymore.
Hypocrisy doesn't apply to politics.
I do those deep dives.
When I see a reply in a tweet to something, I'm like, oh, let's go look at that person who has 50 followers and doesn't really tweet anything but replies.
Which is such a good use of your time.
It's research, Jared.
It's research.
So, you know, but here's what they're going to say.
They're saying they all do this.
All the politicians lie.
Democrats, Republicans, it's the same.
And that is the crux of the matter, right?
Because it really isn't the same at this point.
You're talking about democracy versus, you know, authoritarianism.
But that nugget has so permeated the entire process that it's like, oh, they all do that.
So, like, we might as well just pick the guy on our side anyway.
We don't need to use that as a barometer anymore.
That's not changing, right?
And so it's almost like, great, the Democrats can do the same thing.
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