Joe Biden offered a brief reaction to Herschel Walker’s deepening scandal surrounding the mother of one of his children, who says she had an abortion paid for by the candidate in 2009.
The president was asked by reporters outside of the White House for his thoughts on the floundering Republican Senate candidate, and responded that his assessment of Mr Walker was “negative”.
He also predicted that Democrats would hold on to the seat currently held by Senator Raphael Warnock, Mr Walker’s opponent, in November.
"What has your reaction been to the Herschel Walker controversy in Georgia, and do you think Democrats can hold that seat?" asked CNN’s MJ Lee.
“Negative,” Mr Biden responded. “And yes.”
The Georgia Senate race has been turned on its head by the shocking scandal, first reported by The Daily Beast. Mr Walker, a staunchly anti-abortion conservative who has four children (some previously hidden from the public) with four different women faces an accusation from one of those women of asking her to have an abortion and eventually paying for the procedure in 2009.
In more recent reporting on the issue, she has gone on to claim that Mr Walker made a similar argument in favour of her seeking abortion years later when she became pregnant again, only for her to decide to carry the pregnancy to term.
Reporting on this issue comes as Mr Walker has been the target of a devastating portrait of his capacity as a father, with media outlets obtaining texts showing that Mr Walker lied to one of his four children about the existence of their secret siblings, and was accused by one of being an absentee parent. Christian Walker, his 23-year-old son, has publicly denounced his father as such and called his Senate campaign a mistake.
While Mr Walker continues to deny that the incident in question ever took place, he has already been caught fudging the truth about whether he knew his accuser and has offered no explanation for the check that the woman has produced as evidence of the payment.
Polling indicates that his campaign is taking damage as a result of the allegations even as Mr Warnock, a practicing reverend, has been hesitant to wield the story as a cudgel personally.
Other Democrats have been less hesitant to jump into the fray, such as Mr Biden and his various allies in Washington such as Senator Richard Blumenthal, who dismissed Mr Walker’s denials in a separate statement about the scandal on Wednesday.
“I find his denials very hard to believe,” Mr Blumenthal told Politico.
