UPDATED: 29 JUN 2021 05:26 PM EST
Former President Donald Trump announced that retired football player Herschel Walker will challenge Sen. Raphael Warnock for his Georgia seat in the 2022 midterms.
Trump was asked about Walker’s Senate run on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, a conservative talk radio program, on Tuesday.
“He told me he’s going to, and I think he will. I had dinner with him a week ago. He’s a great guy. He’s a patriot. And he’s a very loyal person, he’s a very strong person. They love him in Georgia, I’ll tell you,” Trump said.
Warnock beat former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) in a runoff election this January after she was appointed to finish the term of former Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson, who resigned in 2019 due to mounting health concerns.
Walker led the University of Georgia Bulldogs to a national championship as a freshman in 1980. He spent three years playing in the upstart USFL — two of them for a team that Trump owned — and then went to the NFL after the USFL collapsed.
“I think he’d win. I think it would be very, very hard to beat Herschel,” Trump continued. “They have the ballads, they made ballads to Herschel. They still sing them all the time. So I think beating him would be very tough. And I think he’s going to run.”
Even after losing his own reelection, Trump remains an influential force in the Republican Party and doesn’t hesitate to weigh in on the political futures of elected officials and candidates. Trump continues to endorse candidates across the country ahead of the 2022 midterms, in addition to campaigning against the House Republicans who voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6 riot.
