Herschel Walker veered into a strange and seemingly inexplicable tangent about vampires, werewolves and faith while the Republican Senate candidate rallied in Georgia ahead of his runoff election in December against Sen Raphael Warnock.
The former professional football player delivered the bizarre commentary while standing at the pulpit at an event held in McDonough, Georgia on Wednesday, as he and other GOP members mount a campaign to stave off Democrats from securing an even stronger majority in the upper chamber by winning a 50th Senate seat on 6 December.
While speaking to supporters, the 60-year-old athlete-turned-politician implored his audience to listen to a meandering anecdote about a horror film he’d recently watched “late at night” as he attempted to connect the dots between the content of the movie and his bid to become senator.
“I was watching this movie called Fright Night,” he began, likely referring to the 1985 Tom Holland film about a young man who discovers his next-door neighbour is a vampire.
“I don’t know if you know, but vampires are some cool people, are they not?” asked Mr Walker, before pointing out something that was apparently only recently revealed to him: “let me tell you something that I found out: a werewolf can kill a vampire.”
Because of this, Mr Walker conceded, he no longer wanted “to be a vampire”, but instead concluded that, “I wanna be a werewolf”.
The GOP challenger to incumbent Mr Warnock then launched into a long rant about the movie and the machinations for killing the fictitious character – “because you know, you gotta have a stake, gotta have a thing to kill him in the heart”.
After spinning the yarn on stage for a few minutes, Mr Walker then attempted to circle the narrative back to the conversation of faith, pointing out that killing vampire with a cross was only possible if a person had “faith”.
“It don’t even work unless you’ve got faith,” he said. “We gotta have faith in our fellow brother, gotta have faith in this country.”
This is hardly the first time that the Republican Georgia politician has courted controversy by weaving figures into speeches, who are typically reserved for the chapter books of fantasy and sci-fi novels.
Just one day before the polls opened in the midterm elections, the Trump-endorsed candidate made one final push to get voters’ support by inexplicably voicing his own support for “Martians” in the US.
“If you’re a Martian and you live in the United States of America, I’m gonna protect you too. Because you belong to my family,” announced Mr Walker at an event in Hiram earlier this month.
Explanation for that remark was not provided, nor has any added clarification been offered since his zany diatribe about the merits of werewolves over vampires this week.
Ahead of the Georgia runoff, Democrats have already secured 50 seats with narrow victories in both Nevada and Arizona. And with the addition of Vice President Kamala’s Harris tiebreaking vote, it assures they will retain a majority in the Senate.
