Donald Trump Declares Heisman Winner Herschel Walker “Going To” Run For Georgia Senate Seat Next Year

Dominic Patten
·4 min read
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“He told me he’s going to, and I think he will,” Donald Trump said today of Herschel Walker’s long-rumored bid for a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia in 2022.

“I had dinner with him a week ago,” the former Celebrity Apprentice host pontificated Tuesday on The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, the recently minted radio replacements for the deceased Rush Limbaugh. “He’s a great guy. He’s a patriot. He’s a very loyal person. They love him in Georgia, I’ll tell you.”

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A frequent presence at MAGA rallies over the years, the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner and ex-Celebrity Apprentice contestant has been teasing out a new career in elected office for a while. In April, Walker told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that “if I run, I’m running to win” against incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock. Just a few days ago, the Texas-based University of Georgia Bulldogs legend put pedal to the metaphorical metal with a posting on social media stating that he was “getting ready” to “run with the big dogs” as the camera did a close-up on a Peach State license plate.

The word in political circles is tht Walker will make his Senate bid public not long after the July 4th holiday. Presently the Senate is tied 50-50 between the GOP and the Democrats. The latter hold power thanks to dual wins in Georgia earlier this year and a tiebreaker in Vice President Kamala Harris, who presides over the Senate as part of her constitutional duties.

“I think he’d win,” Trump added today of Walker, the card-carrying Republican he appointed and then reappointed in his last days in office to run the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition. “I think it would be very, very hard to beat Herschel,” continued the man under intense investigation by the grand jury-convening Manhattan DA, among others. “They have the ballads, they made ballads to Herschel. They still sing them all the time. So I think beating him would be very tough. And I think he’s going to run.”

If this isn’t more Trumpverse bloviating, there is little doubt Walker could be a formidable candidate. However, neither capturing the GOP nomination nor then beating Warnock is a sure thing.

For one thing, Georgia-born Walker would have to establish Peach State residence pretty quick. Even with many still on the sidelines, he would then have to tackle a potential strong line of other Republicans seeking to take back the crucial seat that the history-making Ebenezer Baptist Church pastor took from the appointed Kelly Loeffler in the special election on January 5 this year. Lastly, Walker would have to beat Warnock himself in a once-solid-red state that went blue for Joe Biden last year. That victory by the now-POTUS in November and Warnock and Jon Ossoff at the top of this year was in no small part to the voters’ rights efforts of likely returning gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, as well as demographic shifts in Atlanta and other urban areas of the one-time Confederate state.

Although Walker appeared on Season 2 of The Celebrity Apprentice in 2009 — and was fired nine weeks in to the NBC reality series — he and Trump actually go way back to the early 1980s. The college football star played for the since-shuttered United States Football League’s New Jersey Generals, which was owned by the NYC real estate developer for two years. The USFL came crashing down in 1985 due to legal action against the NFL. By the time the league was dead, Walker had moved onto play for the Dallas Cowboys and later the Minnesota Vikings, the Philadelphia Eagles, and the New York Giants.

Walker ended his NFL run back with the Cowboys before retiring after the 1997 season. A competitor in the 1992 Winter Olympics on the U.S. bobsled team and an MMA fighter, Walker’s biggest gig nowadays besides his President’s Council chair job is as the “Brand Ambassador” for Dallas-based tech advocate company AiBUY.

If he were to win, Walker would join past Auburn University head football coach and junior senator from the state of Alabama Tommy Tuberville in the upper chamber’s gridiron contingent.

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