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U.S. GOP Senate nominee Herschel Walker of Georgia is being mocked for touting what looks like a Cobb County photo ID naming the former NFL star as an “honorary agent” and “Special Deputy Sheriff,” which he is using to attack Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock, who he is trying to unseat.
It’s not going well for the Trump-endorsed Republican who responded to the mass shooting deaths of 19 students and two teachers at the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas in May by saying, “Cain killed Abel. You know, and that’s a problem that we have.”
“While @ReverendWarnock was calling law enforcement ‘thugs and bullies’ I was proud to serve the blue as an Honorary Agent and Special Deputy Sheriff of Cobb County for many years,” Walker tweeted, including an image of his ID card.
While @ReverendWarnock was calling law enforcement “thugs and bullies” I was proud to serve the blue as an Honorary Agent and Special Deputy Sheriff of Cobb County for many years. pic.twitter.com/3wf7ay5JmB
— Herschel Walker (@HerschelWalker) August 30, 2022
Yale University Professor Howard Forman had to explain to Walker who “honorary” means.
Did you misunderstand the word “honorary”? See 3(a). pic.twitter.com/yUuLsidNCE
— (((Howard Forman))) (@thehowie) August 30, 2022
“Herschel Walker lied about having a background in law enforcement,” MSNBC’s Steve Benen noted, pointing to this MSNBC article. “Why he’d help bring attention to this is a mystery.”
“Senate hopeful Herschel Walker said he was a University of Georgia graduate, but that wasn’t true,” Benen wrote in June. “The Georgia Republican said he was his high school’s valedictorian, but that wasn’t true. He said he was the founder of a charity for veterans, but that wasn’t true. And as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, Walker has also said he had a background in law enforcement, and that apparently wasn’t true, either.”
Benen uncovered the meaning of Walker’s “Honorary Agent and Special Deputy Sheriff” ID card.
“In one speech, Walker told a U.S. Army audience about a 2001 incident. ‘I worked in law enforcement, so I had a gun,’ he claimed. In 2017, he specifically said, ‘I work with the Cobb County Police Department.’”
(Note that comment was made in the present tense.)
“There’s reason to believe otherwise,” Benen elaborated. “The Cobb County Police Department told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution it has no record of Walker working with the department. The Republican’s campaign said he was ‘an honorary deputy’ — a point the Cobb sheriff’s office could not confirm — though a former DeKalb County district attorney said the title was meaningless, even if true.”
“Being an ‘honorary deputy,’ a local prosecutor said, is like having ‘a junior ranger badge.’”
Benen also reported, “As recently as 2019, Walker also told an audience, ‘I spent time at Quantico at the FBI training school. Y’all didn’t know I was an agent?’”
CNN fact checker Daniel Dale weighed in on Sen. Warnock’s remarks.
“Warnock’s ‘thug’ comments were used in Kelly Loeffler’s attack ads against him in 2020. Like this Walker tweet, the ads didn’t explain what he was talking about: abusive policing in Ferguson, specifically.”
Star Telegram reporter Bud Kennedy lambasted Walker, writing, “In 1974, I was appointed a special deputy sheriff in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, with a card like this to prove it. It is an honor, not an assignment. I put the card in a keepsake drawer. It is not meant to be used to mislead voters.”
Meanwhile, Lincoln Project Executive Director Fred Wellman snarked, “I don’t like to brag but I was an Honorary Pilot with TWA in the ’70’s myself. I had wings and everything.”
U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) tweeted, “United Airlines once gave my son a little pin with wings on it. He was smart enough to know that didn’t make him a real pilot.”
The American Independent’s Oliver Willis served up perhaps the most colorful retort, tweeting, “last week we had ron desantis cosplaying as a navy pilot this week we get herschel walker cosplaying as a cop will jd vance, dr oz, or blake masters step up so we get the entire village people roster?”
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