Herschel Walker Delivers Unhinged Transphobic Speech the Day After LGBTQ Nightclub Shooting
A mass shooting of queer and trans people couldn't even derail the Georgia senate candidate from his hateful rhetoric for 24 hours.
Politics

On Saturday, a 22-year-old man with a history of domestic violence killed five people and injured 22 others with an AR-15 at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Some people were at the venue, Club Q, to mark the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a commemoration of people killed in anti-trans violence. One of the victims, bartender Daniel Aston, was transgender.
Some gun-loving Republicans offered their typical thoughts and prayers after the 34th mass shooting in the U.S. this year; others just carried on with the kind of homophobic rhetoric that fuels hate crimes like this. Herschel Walker, who’s currently campaigning for a December 6 runoff election in Georgia against incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D), went ahead with his wildly bigoted stump speech on Sunday in Carrollton, without acknowledging the shooting at all.
Here’s what Walker told voters yesterday, according to audio obtained by Jezebel:
“Do y’all know what the definition of an enemy is? A enemy is somebody that don’t like you. But they been telling you they don’t know the definition of a woman either. So think about that either. They don’t know the definition of a woman. But I’m going to tell you the definition of a woman. Because it written in my great book. It said ‘a man and a woman.’ And there’s a difference between the two of them. So that’s the reason men shouldn’t be in women’s sport—here’s a difference.
But then, yet, they trying to tell you a man could get pregnant. Get that out of your head. No, he can’t. No, he can’t. All they’re trying to do is take you down in that elevator, take you down in that elevator and lie to you. But I’m going to tell you right now, I’m not going to lie to you. I’m going to tell you, we’re in a mess. We’re in a mess because we put weak leaders in Washington. Weak leaders in Washington that not representing us.”
The candidate also railed against honoring people’s correct pronouns in the military, a frequent line of his: