Christian Walker is a conservative social media personality and podcast host whose father, businessman and college football legend Herschel Walker, is the Republican candidate running against Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock in this year’s midterm election.
But father and son have rarely crossed paths in public this year – until this week, when the younger Walker denounced his father in a series of social media posts and videos.
Christian Walker’s criticism was fueled, he said, by the recent Herschel Walker scandal: On Monday night, the candidate denied a Daily Beast report that he paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. abortion politician.
Speaking of the Daily Beast story, Herschel Walker told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday, “It’s a lie.”
His son used the same word to attack him.
“People on the right are saying I did a campaign event with my dad last year … I did an event last year when we were told he was going to be ahead of his past and hold himself accountable,” Christian Walker said in one of his videos this week after the Daily Beast story.
“None of that happened. Everything was a lie,” he said. “Don’t lie about your life at the expense of me, my mother and all the people who have influenced you throughout your life. You must not pretend to be a moral family man.”
Christian Walker did not respond to multiple interview requests from ABC News.
In his social media posts, Christian Walker alluded to other controversies his father has downplayed, including news articles this year that Herschel Walker has multiple children while only publicly acknowledging Christian. (“To say I’m hiding my kids because I don’t discuss them with reporters to win a campaign? That’s outrageous,” Herschel said in a statement this summer.)
Christian Walker took a different view.
“You know, my favorite subject is my father’s absence. Surprise! Because it affected me,” he said in a video Tuesday, adding, “He has four children, four different women. Wasn’t in the house to raise any of them.”
The night before, shortly after the Daily Beast report, Christian Walker wrote on Twitter: “[H]How dare you lie and pretend to be a “moral, Christian, upright man”? You have lived a life in which you have DESTROYED other people’s lives. How dare you.”
In another tweet, Christian Walker wrote, “Every member of Herschel Walker’s family asked him not to run for office because we all knew (something of) his past.”
Herschel Walker also tweeted this week. “I LOVE my son no matter what” he wrote.
Republican Senate candidate for Georgia Herschel Walker speaks at a campaign event September 9, 2022 in Gwinnett, Georgia.
Megan Varner/Getty Images
Who is Christian Walker? School athlete turned social media star
Christian Walker, 23, is the only child of Herschel Walker and Cindy DeAngelis Grossman, the candidate’s first wife. They married in 1983 after meeting at the University of Georgia, where the elder Walker found soccer success and Grossman ran on the track.
Christian Walker was born in Dallas in 1999, shortly after Herschel Walker retired from the Dallas Cowboys, the last professional team he played for. He and Grossman divorced in 2002 when their son was 3 years old.
Grossman sought and obtained a restraining order against Herschel Walker in 2005.
In a 2008 interview with ABC News’ “Nightline,” Grossman offered a disturbing glimpse into the final years of their relationship, claiming that her ex-husband once threatened her with a gun.
“He got a gun and put it to my temple,” she told Nightline.
“Point the gun right to your temple,” ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff replied, “and what did he say?”
“I’m going to blow your brains out,” Grossman said.
Herschel Walker claimed he had no recollection of this particular incident — which he says was a byproduct of his diagnosis with dissociative identity disorder, or DID, a complex mental illness marked by some severe and potentially debilitating symptoms. He has since claimed he received therapy and was “cured” of his DID, and has said he took responsibility for all past transgressions – something his son had a problem with this week.
Court filings related to Grossman’s divorce proceedings contain additional allegations that Herschel Walker threatened her and her then-boyfriend with violence. Herschel Walker denied these allegations when questioned by police in 2005.
Christian Walker, son of Republican U.S. Senate nominee for Georgia Herschel Walker, speaks in a post from his October 4, 2022 Twitter feed.
ChristianWalk1r/Twitter
Become a political figure
Christian Walker, though he’s now a vocal political conservative with hundreds of thousands of social media followers, said last year he rarely heard or spoke about politics growing up, even from his father.
“It’s so weird, but we never talked about it at my house,” he said in a 2021 interview with former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara.
“Especially my dad, I don’t remember him actually having the news. My mother occasionally had the news. I wasn’t really paying attention,” Christian Walker said at the time, “and then when I was about 14 years old, [I started] Listening to politics and paying attention to it.”
He was also around 14 years old when he started cheering at competitions including for Spirit of Texas, one of the most prestigious programs in the country. He also ran on his high school track and field team.
He previously said he never felt he let his father down by cheerleading instead of playing football. In a 2015 interview with CBS News, Herschel Walker said he was “proud” that his son was in such an athletic sport.
At 16, the younger Walker won the 2016 World Championship of All Star Cheerleading at Disney World and went on to cheer at Southern Methodist University. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in the spring and moved to Florida – after resenting California’s progressive politics, he said, while longing for a “free” state.
Since high school, he’s increasingly focused on his conservative outlook and social media persona.
In 2020, he reportedly led a “Gays for Trump” march in West Hollywood outside of Los Angeles and built an online presence largely due to derogatory and tongue-in-cheek comments on social and political issues — like this Testing if Chick-fil-A chicken “sets him straight”—while attracting fans, critics, and plenty of commentators.
His content, uncompromising and brash, includes videos about “blue-haired liberal” guys, complaints about rising gas prices, and the latest from his cascade of disappointments in dating men. (He has said he’s uncomfortable with the term “gay.”)
He often narrates his videos from the Starbucks drive-through line, where he then interrupts his impassioned monologues to order a drink. Some of his online activity has spilled out of the car in spats – but still in the to-go line – like when he did confronted R&B artist Kehlani after saying Kehlani called him an “A-hole” when ordering it.
He has attempted to create an image distinct from his father’s, he said, and he has rarely used his social media accounts to promote his father’s political endeavors.
“I’ve tried to build my platform around me and not just under his shadow or whatever,” he told Lara Trump last year.
The younger Walker joined his father in support of his candidacy last December. introduce him at an event at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
Separately, Christian Walker also sold some pro-Herschel Walker merchandise through his website this year, although those items appear to have been removed.
Taking to Twitter this week, he claimed that he largely withdrew from his father’s campaign because of his father’s handling of his personal baggage.
“We were told he would face his past and tell the truth,” he wrote. “You know, before he started lying.”
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.
