Exclusive— Herschel Walker: ‘Georgia Is Next Because I’m Running,’ ‘I’m Going to Go Out and Win’

Former NFL star running back Herschel Walker, a Republican running for U.S. Senate in Georgia, told Breitbart News exclusively on Wednesday that “Georgia is next” after Republican Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin’s shocking victory in Virginia Tuesday night.

“Georgia is next because I’m running,” Herschel Walker said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

Walker also said of Youngkin’s win that he thinks it is a sign Americans nationwide “are waking up.”

“Well, I was happy to see it. I think that people are waking up. I think people are getting tired of this. Here we go. They see what’s going on,” Walker said. “Let’s look at this economy. One of the things that they heard all during the election last year was this Keystone Pipeline, the Keystone Pipeline, Keystone Pipeline. I remember hearing our president say, ‘Oh, I’m not gonna cancel it. I’m not going to do anything. I’m not. I’m going to keep the jobs.’ Before he even got into office, he cancelled it. He made us rely on other people for all of our energy. We can be self-sufficient for ourselves and because of that, the prices are going out of the roof. Gas prices, you can’t get stuff on the shelves because you got to deliver. You see the ships out there? People are not working; people don’t have jobs because the government is paying them. So it’s a lot more than just people waking up saying, ‘wait a minute, something is not right here.’ And I think that’s what’s so great is people are starting to see that.”

Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin arrives to speak at an election night party in Chantilly, VA, early Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021, after he defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

In the wake of Youngkin’s victory and a broader red wave in elections coast to coast where Democrat President Joe Biden and his party were soundly rejected by voters nationwide, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics’s Larry Sabato Crystal Ball changed its ranking of Georgia’s Senate race next year from “lean Democrat” to pure “toss up.”

Walker — who currently holds a commanding lead in the GOP primary after winning endorsements from across the GOP including most notably former President Donald Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — would face off against newly-elected Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in November next year if he wins the nomination. Warnock slipped into the U.S. Senate earlier this year after he defeated now-former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) in the runoff election on Jan. 5, which capped a rough 2020 for Republicans and a banner year for Democrats, who held their House majority despite significant losses and took the U.S. Senate and the White House. Ten months later, though, Democrats have failed to deliver much given slim majorities in both chambers of Congress and an inept White House with an aging Biden at the helm.

Asked about the UVA ratings change on the Georgia Senate race next year during the interview on Wednesday, Walker told Breitbart News he is in this race to win it because he is concerned about the direction of the country.

“Well, one of the things I always told people is I don’t go by polls or go by anything like that because I think as long as you got breath in your lungs, you can go out and defeat anyone,” Walker said. “When I entered this race, I entered it to win it. I didn’t enter the race to look good. I didn’t enter this race because I needed another feather in my cap. I entered this race because I saw something going wrong in this country. I saw people that was saying negative things about America. I saw people talking about this critical race theory. I saw the gas price going out the roof, stuff not on the shelves, and I said, ‘something is not right.’ I got into this race because I said I wanted people to know the buck is going to stop here. I’m not going to settle for this. I’m going to speak out and tell the truth whether you like it or not. I’m going to bring people together and I’m going to go out and win. They want to talk about Sen. Warnock and whatever he did to get into office for this year. But now, he’s going to have to face me if I win this primary, which I know I got a good chance of winning. He’s going to have to face me and it’s not going to be as easy as he thought it was going to be. People have shown that by the vote that they did in Virginia.”

Walker’s interview with Breitbart News also comes as the Atlanta Braves won the World Series on Tuesday night, capping a wild year for Atlanta when it comes to Major League Baseball (MLB) after the league moved the All-Star Game to Denver because of Georgia’s new election integrity law. Walker said he was proud of the Braves for the win and slammed Democrats and MLB for costing black businesses significant business opportunities — that he hopes the World Series win for the Braves made up for — by moving the All-Star Game.

Manager Brian Snitker #43 of the Atlanta Braves hoists the commissioner’s trophy following the team’s 7-0 victory against the Houston Astros in Game Six to win the 2021 World Series at Minute Maid Park on November 02, 2021, in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)

“I’m very I’m very proud of the Braves because they sort of saved the day for a lot of the small businesses that the MLB took it away from them by moving the All-Star Game to Denver,” Walker told Breitbart News. “They sort of took some of those business opportunities, and those store owners they lost business. I think the Braves now going into the World Series, and winning it, I think it brought that attention back and also is one of the ultimate redemptions I think you can ever do.”

A successful black athlete himself before his entrance into politics, Walker also said he thinks Democrats like Warnock have avoided discussing the negative impact MLB’s move had on the city of Atlanta and many black-owned businesses. He compared it, too, to Democrats avoiding discussing the impact of their defunding police policies on black communities.

“When you think about it, they don’t talk about anything like that because when you think about defunding the police, who does it hurt? It hurts a lot of your minority and more impoverished areas,” Walker said. “They don’t talk about that. They don’t talk about defunding the police and how it will hurt those areas. People that have money are going to have to pay for their own security. And they don’t want to mention that about moving the All-Star Game because it hurt businesses and that’s not the agenda they want to play. That’s why I think people got to wake up and educate themselves and know, ‘wait a minute, guys, you’re saying certain things.’ But they’re not saying it because they love you or want to help you, they’re saying it because they’re going to hurt you. All of us are in it together and that’s what’s so sad.”

He added too that he thinks the Braves’ World Series win represents the “true American dream.”

“One thing that made me so proud is this showed how great this country is,” Walker said. “If you think about this for a moment, I’ve heard just how bad America is during the Olympics, how people wanted to protest the flag, and how they teach this in school and stuff. But yet this is the only place where you can get the true American dream. You see the Braves win the World Series but then did you see some of the players that were on the team — the MVP — they’re from other countries. They’re not from America. So they came here to get that dream because you can only get it here in America. That old saying, was it Don King? He said, ‘Only in America.’ And that’s true. And that’s what I think was so great: to see the Braves team win when in the mid-season people didn’t even expect them to be there. But then all of a sudden, the owners and the management all came together and went out and got players and stuff and you look at what happened. They accomplished something you only can do once a year.”

The two episodes — the Braves winning the World Series and the red wave in Tuesday’s elections nationwide — combine to shock Democrats heading into next year’s midterm elections, in that the Braves’ win serves as a jolt to Atlanta that the All-Star Game removal took away and the Youngkin and other GOP wins represent a similar comeback for embattled Republicans after a brutal 2020. Walker said he thinks part of why Youngkin won is because he focused on what matters to ordinary Americans. But Democrats are obsessed, he said, with a radical and out-of-touch agenda in Washington, DC.

“Well, I think that’s one reason that Youngkin won was because he got down to the critical things that people care about,” Walker said. “They [the Democrats] want to do all these spending bills. But do people know that they are trying to write a check that we shouldn’t be able to cash? Do they know that we’re writing a check that our grandkids and our kids may have to answer for? We can’t do that. They want to spend money, spend money, spend money — wait, what is going to happen to this economy? It is great to spend money, but you got to have money to spend. People are not working today. We just came out of a pandemic. And now we’re trying to pay people to not go to work? You can’t do that. They’re trying to rush it through right now. They’re trying to pass it through with all these other issues coming into play.”

Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker speaks at a rally featuring former US President Donald Trump on September 25, 2021, in Perry, Georgia. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

When it comes to critical race theory, as a black man, Walker thinks it is not a fair or accurate representation of this country, and he is concerned the federal government has too much sway over children’s education.

“I’ve been saying this for a long time that I do not want the federal government raising my child,” Walker said. “I think people are starting to see they don’t want the federal government to be co-parent to that child. it is amazing that they forgot about teaching arithmetic, history, social studies. Schools, they try to teach critical race theory. And you know what, that’s not what parents want taught. Parents want something else. Then, now, you see where the federal government is trying to weaponize themselves and they are even going out after the parents for speaking out. Where in this country do we do that to anyone? We have the right to have our opinions, we have the right to speak. But right now, with this administration here, they are going to go out and go after you if you speak out. Normally, if you speak out, they call you a racist. It gets you quiet. That’s what I was telling people today, ‘we can’t just sit on our hands anymore. We can’t just sit back and just let them call you a racist.’ You got to speak out and say, ‘No, that’s not what I want.’ I won’t defund any police. I won’t defund the police. I want us to take care of the military. I don’t want us to do what we did in Afghanistan. We have to stand up right now because if we don’t, we won’t recognize this country. We have a group getting together that we elected into office that decide things like that — this is not just one person. This is more than one person deciding that. And that’s one reason I told people I’m running for office. I’m not promising to do this and promising to do that, but I am going to promise I know how to bring people together. And I hope people see that when I see when someone like Sen. McConnell said he’s going to endorse Herschel Walker. And at the same time, President Trump endorsed Herschel Walker, when it showed that we can come together and we can go out to do something to help this country and save this country.”

Walker also said he believes that Democrats will be doing everything they can to rebrand after Tuesday’s crushing defeat and that he is gearing up for them, in particular, to try to falsely blame Republicans for their push to defund police. He also warned the establishment media will help Democrats push inaccurate information and said that Republicans need to fight back harder.

“I can tell you this here, there’s no doubt, I can guarantee that the Democrats are going to change their approach of what they’re going to be doing now,” Walker said. “I guarantee you this, they’re running around right now trying to figure out how they can change their approach. For months they talked about defunding the police. Well, they found out that was a terrible idea. Now they say they want to fund the police. It is sad, but right now, they’re going to come back and blame defunding the police all on the Republicans. They are going to blame it on them, but they will figure out a way to do it. That’s what is so sad, now they are going to try to change and say, ‘nope that’s not what we said. We did not say that. That’s not how we put it.’ They got to get people to believe it, but we got to get our media to tell the truth. We got to get them to tell the truth. Give the people the truth and let them decide. I grew up in south Georgia, where my parents work extremely hard. My family works extremely hard, and they come home and watch one station. They take that station as being gospel and that station is just giving them their opinions. They’re not telling them the true news. That’s what we’re having to deal with today.”

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