Opinion: Christian Walker Isn’t A Savior, But That Doesn’t Mean He’s Not Doing The Lord’s Work

Christian Walker, son of Herschel Walker, and LGBTQ people and allies in Southern California hold a march in Los Angeles in support of Donald Trump a couple of weeks before the 2020 election. (Photo: Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock)

Christian Walker, son of Herschel Walker, and LGBTQ people and allies in Southern California hold a march in Los Angeles in support of Donald Trump a couple of weeks before the 2020 election. (Photo: Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock)

Children of aspiring politicians have usually been off limits — unless that child is Christian Walker, and then all bets are off.

Walker, 23, has made his name both off his father ― Herschel Walker, the buffoonish cartoon of a man who made his name as one of the best college running backs Georgia has ever seen ― and as a bullish miscreant, and he does all of this in segmented rants on TikTok. 

As such Walker ― the national cheerleading champ, not the former running back and Republican Senate candidate ― has become a rising star in the land of conservatives because no one loves a Black man telling other Black men that they aren’t good fathers like conservatives do.

In one of Walker’s infamous TikTok rants on absentee fathers, he exclaims loudly and annoyingly that Nick Cannon (yes, the host of “Wild N’ Out”) needs to: “Get home and raise your kids!” 

Walker continued: “And take care of the women you’re knocking up! Can you control your thing for three seconds?”

It’s a popular refrain from right-wing Black politicians trying to echo the white conservative chorus that Black men aren’t present for their children. Though it’s been reported that 69.4% of Black children are born out of wedlock, Black fathers are actually more involved than weddings would suggest. As one study found, marriage numbers don’t translate into children being raised without fathers. 

A 2013 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Black fathers who are in the household are more likely than Latino and white dads to bathe, feed and clothe their children. They were also more likely to spend quality time with their babies and help with homework. And this carried over for Black fathers who aren’t in the household, as Black dads who aren’t married are more likely to read to their children and take them to activities than Latino or white fathers who aren’t in the home. 

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Though Cannon does have a number of children ― 10 with six women ― there is no proof that he is, in fact, an absentee father. But why would Walker let facts stop him from a good TikTok rant?

So Walker has found a niche for himself: He’s a young, openly gay, opinionated, hip conservative who makes viral videos that are typically chastising someone or something in a gratingly obnoxious voice. He’s the guy behind you in Starbucks protesting loudly over a drink mistake, and that’s not me just taking a shot at Walker, as he proudly proclaims that he’s been drinking Starbucks since he was 6 and got into a viral dust-up with singer Kehlani in the Starbucks drive-thru. His brand of irksome ignorance has a strong following on social media. According to Walker, his first TikTok account had about 400,000 followers until it was banned. His new account has 169,000 and rising. 

And as such he’s become a conservative darling. A kind of Republican pixie: a self-aggrandizing Black man who disses Black people while wearing the latest from Gucci and Prada. Think a less spaced-out Kanye West or a more fashionable Candace Owens. And conservatives eat this all up because they love Black voices in their space who are willing to do the dual work of projecting that the entire party is not racist while allowing them the cover of not having to be the white face that says the racist thing. 

Here’s Walker claiming that Black people are more outwardly racist than white people. But don’t get caught there because we’ve seen this all before. What’s important here is that the chickens have come home to roost. It’s almost as if God loves us more than everyone of the Walkers because all hell has hit the fan and now, Walker, the viral voice has turned on his father, the inarticulate voice.

If you’ve not been following the fallout, I don’t blame you. It’s messy. But let me see if I can catch you up. Herschel Walker is a staunch, violent Georgia Republican. A violent Republican is a person who not only believes in the governmental policy of the right but is actively pushing to suppress, reduce or downright deny the rights of others. As such, candidate Walker doesn’t believe in abortion rights of any kind. He doesn’t care if the pregnancy is killing the mother, or if she’s been raped or if the child is the result of incest. So it was fitting that news broke this week that Walker allegedly … wait for it … encouraged and paid for … don’t spoil it now … an abortion. 

Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker speaks to the news media following his Unite Georgia Bus Stop rally in Norcross, Georgia, on Sept. 9. (Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker speaks to the news media following his Unite Georgia Bus Stop rally in Norcross, Georgia, on Sept. 9. (Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

According to The Daily Beast, which broke the story, Walker paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. And the woman, who didn’t want to be identified, had receipts, including one for $575 from the abortion clinic, a “get well” card from Walker and a $700 personal check from Walker because the woman wasn’t sure of the price for the procedure. The woman told the Beast that she was coming forward because she was tired of Walker’s rigorous stance on abortion, knowing what she’d gone through.

“I just can’t with the hypocrisy anymore,” she said. “We all deserve better.”

Of course, Walker denied the claims. He didn’t however provide any receipts, but he did threaten to sue, a page right out of former President’s Donald Trump’s playbook. 

“I’m not taking this anymore. I planning to sue the Daily Beast for this defamatory lie. It will be filed tomorrow morning,” he wrote on Twitter.

Turns out that someone else took issue with Walker’s apparently duplicitous two-facedness: his son Christian. 

“Every family member of Herschel Walker asked him not to run for office, because we all knew (some of) his past. Every single one,” Walker tweeted.

“He decided to give us the middle finger and air out all of his dirty laundry in public, while simultaneously lying about it.

“I’m done.”

Nothing says family feud like posting tweets to a captive Twitter audience. The younger Walker, who considers himself a free-speech radicalist, continued, because of course he did:

And this wasn’t the first scandal to rock the Walker house. Earlier this year, it was reported that the elder Walker lost count and somehow didn’t realize or account for all of his children. Turns out that Walker has a 10-year-old son he apparently has limited contact with, a 13-year-old son and an adult daughter whom he fathered when he was about 20, all of whom he forgot to acknowledge while running for office. In fact, the only child who actually was in the spotlight, either because Walker put him there or he stole it, was Christian. Walker swears that it was all a big mix-up, that he’s always acknowledged his kids and just didn’t want to use them as political props. 

“I have four children. Three sons and a daughter. They’re not ‘undisclosed’ ― they’re my kids. I support them all and love them all,” Walker told HuffPost in June. 

The Daily Beast noted that’s not entirely true because the 10-year-old’s mother had to sue Walker in order for him to claim paternity and pay child support. Which is ironic considering that Walker had a whole spiel on Black men standing up for their responsibilities despite the relationship they have with the child’s mother. 

From HuffPost:

In a 2020 interview with conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Walker called fatherless homes a “major, major problem” in Black communities and described himself as acting “like a father” to fatherless kids in the Georgia town where he grew up.

“Remember, you can leave the wife, but don’t leave your child,” he said he advises young men he meets.

In another 2020 interview with conservative video bloggers Diamond and Silk, Walker disparaged Black fathers who leave boys to be raised by their mother. He likened this to when Black families were separated during slavery.

“Even if you have to leave that woman — you don’t leave that child,” he said.

Republicans have already begun to spin the narrative because they want nothing more than to take control of Congress at all costs. They need to gain only one seat to take control of the Senate, and the race in Georgia between Walker and the Democratic incumbent, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, remains tight despite this latest scandal. 

The Walker campaign has not even tried to hide the hypocrisy, as conservative radio host Dana Loesch noted: “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.”

During an appearance on Fox News, Walker went as far as to suggest that his son’s statements are nothing more than a political move by the left, implying that Christian Walker is some kind of double agent secretly working for the Democrats.

But before we rush to judgment about the Walkers, remember this: The call is coming from inside the house while Christian, as deplorable as he may be, is doing the lord’s work of undoing his father’s run for office, and if that can bring down the Walker brandand prevent the unintelligible, fake virtuous charlatan from taking office, then I’m here for it.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.