Walker campaign doubles down on ‘China’s bad air’ comment

July 12, 2022

Also inside today’s edition of Swing State Georgia:

• Part of Georgia’s new election law survives a legal challenge.

• A Georgia Democrat gets an earful after a Fox News op-ed.

• UGA’s football trophy stays on the political sidelines.

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Most political candidates wouldn’t want to prolong a negative story. But Herschel Walker’s camp thinks it sees opportunity in the aftermath of his mystifying comments over the weekend about the origins of air pollution and the coronavirus.

As your Insiders reported Monday, the Republican Senate nominee told a Hall County GOP gathering that was barred to the media that the coronavirus was “created by China” and federal efforts to clean up climate pollution are worthless because air moves.

“But since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air gotta move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we’ve got to clean that back up.”

Rather than ignoring the story - as his deputies have done after most of Walker’s previous gaffes - Walker aides doubled down on the comment.

Campaign manager Scott Paradise spun the comments to assert that Walker meant to say China was “primarily responsible for causing Covid and polluting the air.”

“Please ask Reverend Warnock if he disagrees,” Paradise texted us, referring to Walker’s November opponent, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock.

Here’s how Warnock spokeswoman Meredith Brasher responded:

“Georgia voters will have a clear choice this fall between Reverend Warnock’s extensive record of fighting to lower costs for hardworking Georgia families and Herschel Walker’s pattern of lies, exaggerations, and completely bizarre claims, all of which show he is not ready to represent Georgians in the U.S. Senate.”

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Overshadowed in the hubbub surrounding Herschel Walker’s latest campaign headache was the relevance of the hire of Chip Lake, the veteran Georgia Republican strategist, to serve as a key deputy.