Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) blamed former President Trump for embattled GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker’s campaign on Thursday as Walker’s Senate bid remains engulfed in scandal.
“[Georgia] let down the entire country,” Duncan told CNN. “Donald Trump led us down a rabbit trail post-election because he was too consumed with trying to save face from losing his election. And he ran us down a trail, and we screwed up.”
Walker’s campaign has been on defense since Monday, when The Daily Beast reported that the anti-abortion candidate had encouraged and paid for a then-girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. Walker strongly denied the allegations, which The Hill has not independently verified.
However, The Daily Beast followed up with a second story revealing that the women making the allegations was the mother of one of Walker’s children. The former NFL star’s campaign continued to struggle when his son Christian Walker, a conservative influencer, publicly criticized his father and accused him of lying about the incident.
Trump, who endorsed Walker, defended the candidate, claiming that he was “being slandered and maligned by the Fake News Media and obviously, the Democrats.”
Duncan said on Thursday that the scandal has left him, along with other Georgia Republicans, unsure of who to support in the Senate race.
“I’m not voting for Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker hasn’t earned my respect or my vote,” Duncan said. “I’m like hundreds of thousands of other Republicans here in Georgia. We’re confused. We don’t really have anywhere to go right now.”
The Georgia lieutenant governor is aligned with GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who has frequently clashed with the former president. Kemp soundly defeated Trump’s endorsed candidate, former Sen. David Perdue, in the Republican primary for governor in May.