Walker Insists He Has No Idea Who Claimed He Paid For Her Abortion. Well, It Turns Out She's The Mother Of One His Four Children. Oops.
In its filing to the Supreme Court, Donald Trump's lawyers slipped up and admitted Trump was guilty of a federal crime. Double Oops.
Oops.
Roger Sollenberger, The Daily Beast:
The woman, a registered Democrat whose years-long relationship with Walker continued after the abortion, told The Daily Beast that her chief concern with revealing her name was because she is the mother of one of Walker’s own children and she wanted to protect her family’s privacy as best she could while also coming forward with the truth. (Walker has publicly acknowledged the child as his own, and the woman proved she is the child's mother and provided credible evidence of a long-term relationship with Walker.)
The Walker campaign declined to comment for this story.
I’ll bet they did.
Sollenberger (my emphasis):
Walker and his campaign have put out seemingly conflicting messages to battle the story, denying it on one hand as a “lie” while also appealing to themes of religious redemption and forgiveness on the other. One [sic] Wednesday, Walker put out a new ad where he discusses overcoming his struggles with mental health “by the grace of God.” . . .
Asked about the role faith played in Walker’s life, the anonymous woman [said] he uses it “when it works for him.”
She said Walker frequently talked about being a Christian, but never once expressed any misgivings about abortion generally . . .
“He didn’t express any regret. . . . He seemed pretty pro-choice to me. He was pro-choice, obviously,” she said. . . .
“He didn’t accept responsibility for the kid we did have together, and now he isn’t accepting responsibility for the one that we didn’t have. That says so much about how he views the role of women in childbirth, versus his own. And now he wants to take that choice away from other women and couples entirely,” she said.
Walker was not merely pro-choice — he was pro-abortion, which should greatly disturb anyone who truly believes abortion is the murder of an unborn baby. But there are precious few of those types in the far-right media or government.
Justin Baragona, also from The Daily Beast, reports that CNN’s Scott Jennings, a right-wing pundit, is not bothered by Walker’s payment for a woman’s abortion. It turns out that murdering a child is a-okay for Jennings because “there’s too much at stake” and the Democrats cannot “continue to have unfettered policy access”. Right-wing radio host and NRA shill Dana Loesch stated she didn’t care what Walker did because “I want control of the Senate.”
Another far-right personality:
Kurt Schlichter to Gretchen Whitmer, Sept. 4: “Stop supporting the murder of babies you savage freak.”
Kurt Schlichter on Herschel Walker paying for girlfriend's abortion, Oct. 4: “Don't care.”
The National Right to Life Committee called attention to its pro-baby-murder stance by saying it “stands behind its endorsement of Herschel Walker” because “Herschel Walker wants to protect unborn children while Raphael Warnock wants to see them die through unlimited abortion”. . . . Reminder: Of those two men, only one has paid cash money for the murder of an unborn child — the NRLC’s preferred candidate.
Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition and lifetime misogynist and all-around hypocrite, said he “expected ‘100 percent’ that evangelical Christians would stick with Mr. Walker.”
Indeed, some far-right voters actually praised Walker for doing “the honorable thing" and helping the woman obtain an abortion.
Family values? Honesty? Christian principles? Those are not aspirations for the GOP. They are not guidelines. They aren’t even real words. They are merely noises that get bleated out at regular intervals.
LATE UPDATE: The reporter who broke this story told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes this might not be the only abortion that Walker paid for. We shall see.
Charlie Sykes of The Bulwark says the GOP’s collective shoulders-shrug to this news regarding Walker “is less a revelation than a reminder of what the party has become. It’s also a preview of what will happen in 2024.”
Speaking of 2024 (and the 2022 midterms), MAGA cult members continue making the lives of election poll workers a living hell, driving them to quit and opening up spots for Trump supporters to come in and assume those responsibilities. (In Texas, 30% of elections workers have quit since 2020.)
Sen. Ron Johnson (Q-WI) told the Milwaukee Rotary Club that, in some positive news, some of the January 6 “protestors did teach us all how you can use flag poles”. Note: A Capitol police officer was severely beaten with several weapons, including a flagpole, according to the man who dragged the officer over to be beaten.
Three Fox hosts — Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Greg Gutfeld — comprise an essential platform for spreading Vladimir Putin’s authortarian propaganda throughout the United States. William Saletan compiled 20 anti-Ukraine/pro-Putin arguments being amplified on Fox. (The anti-trans rhetortic from both Putin and Fox is identical.)
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell reports that Donald Trump’s lawyers have “stepped in it” with their 37-page appeal to the US Supreme Court:
As with all Trump filings in this case, the Trump lawyers do not ever admit that the classified documents are classified documents and they never suggest any reason why the documents marked classified might not be classified and the Trump lawyers never suggest why any documents marked classified — even if no longer classified — could possibly legally remain in Donald Trump’s possession. . . .
In their appeal today, the Trump lawyers still offered absolutely no reason why Donald Trump would be entitled to these documents — and they made the mistake of using a word that they have not used before. In describing Donald Trump’s relationship to these documents, after saying in their Supreme Court appeal tonight, once again, that this case is “essentially a document storage dispute”, the Trump lawyers, on page 30, went on to say “the Government has sought to criminalize President Trump’s possession and management of his own personal and presidential records”.
Possession of those records is a crime. That is why Donald Trump’s lawyers have been avoiding that word — possession. But on page 30 of their filing to Clarence Thomas tonight, the Trump lawyers stepped in it, saying the Government has sought to criminalize Trump’s possession of the records. Everywhere else in their filing, they refer to a former president’s legal right to access to their presidential records. . . .
In every filing the Trump lawyers have made in this case, they have been trying to suggest that possession of the documents by the former president is perfectly legal without ever using the word possession. But tonight, they did.
One of the Trump lawyers’ oft-repeated lines appears in tonight’s Supreme Court brief, saying “the Government has attempted to criminalize a document management dispute”. But tonight, in one line of that same filing, the Trump lawyers admitted it’s not a document management dispute, it is a document possession dispute. And what the Supreme Court should know by now is that possession of those documents by anyone other than the federal government is not legal. . . .
The Trump appeal was filed today, the same day the Washington Post reports that according to “14 officials” in his administration, Donald Trump routinely mishandled classified records in the White House. Many of those sources told the Washington Post that they were not surprised at all by what the FBI found with their search warrant at Donald Trump’s Florida residence. . . .
The Washington Post reported that Donald Trump personally participated in packing boxes at the White House for shipment to Florida and the Washington Post reports, even more importantly, that the 15 boxes that were sent from Florida to the National Archives in January of this year were packed by Donald Trump.
The Post reports: “Trump himself eventually packed the boxes that were returned in January, people familiar with the matter said.” After Donald Trump personally packed those boxes and had them sent to the National Archives, when the FBI searched his home months after that, they found classified documents in his desk.
So there is very strong evidence that when Donald Trump personally was packing those boxes to be sent to the National Archives, he was willfully withholding and contuning to willfully, criminally, possess other government documents, including classified documents . . . in . . his . . . desk.
After sending that first shipment of 15 boxes to the National Archives in January of this year, Donald Trump asked a lawyer to say that all the government documents had then been returned to the National Archives, but the lawyer refused to say that. The Washington Post reports that “[Alex] Cannon, a former Trump Organization lawyer who worked for the campaign and for Trump after the presidency, told Trump he could not tell the archives all the requested material had been returned. He told others he was not sure if other documents were still at the club and would be uncomfortable making such a claim . . . Other Trump advisers also encouraged Cannon not to make such a definitive statement . . .”
So the new evidence we have tonight in a possible criminal prosecution of Donald Trump includes evidence that Donald Trump personally decided what documents to send to Florida and then he personally decided what documents to send back to the government and what documents to then keep, illegally, in his possession.