By Allen R. Gray
NDG Contributing Writer
A not-so-artful lie has proven to be a most formidable tool for Republicans seeking to be elected. Even with the potential shame that is attached to bold-faced lying, there are no signs of Republicans stopping now.
Sometimes the disingenuous rhetoric of some Republicans becomes too much for their own families to tolerate.
The contentious nature between father and son does not always meet the level of David and Absalom, but the results of that contention can be just revealing and damaging.
It was blatant hypocrisy that caused Christian Walker to stand and speak unabated on the sins of his father, Hershel Walker, who comes across as a Trump in blackface.
Before the days of the NFL’s concussion protocol, Herschel ran the football for touchdowns most brutally and violently. He perfected this bone-crushing, head-banging style of running throughout high school. He banged his head all his years in college…he banged his head as a professional football player—then he retired.
It wasn’t long after his retirement that reports of Walker’s impossible-to-explain behavior gave his fans a cause to pause and ponder.
Here is an ephemeral recap of the impudent behavior that brought the Walkers to a state of flux.
First Walker left his fans wondering if he had actually attempted suicide—or if he really was so engaged with a track of music on his car’s stereo that he forgot that the garage door was down, and he had the car running as he says. The dog had to save him by barking to alert Walker’s wife. But this enigma didn’t end there.
Walker claimed he was a trained FBI agent. That’s not true. He claimed he graduated college at the top of his class. Not true. Walker made overstated claims of business successes, claimed credit for founding a veteran’s support program, and he even brazenly claimed his “ally” Donald Trump never said the 2020 election was stolen.
The truth could not be found in any of those claims.
The falsehood that speaks the harshest about Walker’s character is the one that revolves around the issue the senate hopeful is most assertive about…it directly revolves around the issue of abortion.
The cover of a surreptitious abortion was first pulled back when The Daily Beast published a story about a woman who’s saying that Herschel Walker had gotten her pregnant in 2009 and urged her to have an abortion. Oh yes. She had receipts: a corroborating witness, a “get well” card from her aborted baby’s daddy, then an actual receipt from the abortion clinic. Herschel paid for the abortion procedure. Allegedly.
The one child Walker did claim publicly, Christian Walker had a lot to say about Dear Old Dad in a series of surprising tweets. Christian called daddy a liar and said Herschel was acting like he is some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.’ The young man said his father had “lived a life of DESTROYING other people’s lives. How dare you.” Allegedly.
That “airing out” process revealed some other heretofore unknown Walker offspring.
Allegedly, Walker’s campaign manager asked him if there were other Walker kids. Herschel told him “No.” A short while later, Walker issued a statement: “I have four children. Three sons and a daughter.”
Walker readily admits he once had a mental/psychological condition, but also said he had found Jesus, he is currently “reborn,” and he no longer has that mental/psychological thing going on. One can assume that Jesus touched and healed Walker.
What Walker and other Republicans are doing is not lying, per se. They are, instead, executing an extremely complex political strategy that was devised to manipulate the angered and gullible minds of vulnerable voters. This mendacious strategy—that had won a presidential election—reaches down and inward like inverted concentric circles; and is to be used at will.
Donald J. Trump, the National Leader of Deceit, seems to lie about practically everything; and his lies are too numerous to outline in this minor treatise. The lies Trump told about President Obama alone are enough to support a Netflix series.
Trump kicked it all off in 2008, with the birtherism movement claiming that Obama was not an American citizen, therefore wasn’t eligible to run for president of the United States. So, there was Obama, the man who would be king, having to pull out his birth certificate like he was an illegal alien fresh across the waters.
Then there’s the matter of US House Minority Whip Stephen Joseph Scalise and the discernable lie he told. Back in June, Scalise was asked if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had anything to do with delaying National Guard assistance during the January 6 attempted coup. He told a boldface and inciteful lie that would keep MAGA-maniacs primed for combat. Now the video footage from inside the room on that eventful day has been released. Scalesse is unmistakably seen in the room with Speaker Pelosi as she is on speaker phone demanding assistance while the attack was in progress. A lot of other Republicans and Democrats were in the room with them.
Some Republican women are also prime provocateurs of this lying philosophy.
The name Marjorie Taylor Greene and inflammatory lies have grown to be synonymous.
Greene was in front of a judge when she lied that she couldn’t recall co-signing with Trump and his attempted coup on January 6. Greene’s recently revealed text message on 17 January 2021 goes thusly:
“In our private chat with only Members several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call Marshall Law.
“I just want you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next.”
Texas Republican Politicians can bend the truth just as well as Greene.
In 1990 when he was seeking an election to the Texas Supreme Court, now Republican Texas Senator John Cornyn represented himself as a graduate of Oxford University in England where he said he studied law. In reality, Cornyn graduated the School of Law at St. Mary’s in San Antonio.
Texas Republican Ted Cruz claimed there was nothing wrong with the Texas electric grid…then when the cold set in, Cruz packed up his family (he left the dog) and went on vacation. Remember this formidable tool is to be used at will, and Cruz is always willing.
Cruz also said that “Ukraine (not Russia) blatantly interfered in our election.” Cruz said Biden released 7,000 illegal, COVID-positive aliens onto one Texas city, and that Biden and his Green New Deal radicals are the reason that “electricity costs (are) through the roof in Texas.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott seems to lie spontaneously about any and everything. Among a surfeit of other lies, in the immediate aftermath of the Uvalde tragedy, Abbott misled the nation on the facts concerning the actions of law enforcement officers on the scene that day. A few days later, Abbott was blaming his grossly inaccurate report on some nameless other person.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has absolutely no reservations when it comes to misleading the public. His reservations are only evident when it’s time to answer for the intermittent lies he spews. Last month, Paxton and his wife Angela ran out of their house, jumped in a pickup truck, and sped off, trying to avoid being served a subpoena from an abortion fund’s lawsuit against the state.
So has become the ways and means of 2022 Republicans.
Lately, when Republicans are confronted with their lies in some legal venue, their mantra has become “I plead the fifth.”
If there is a bright side to be had amid this melee of Republican lies it is to be found in the prophetic words of Greg Abbott: “It could’ve been worse.”
