What to know about Christian Walker and his star turn in Georgia’s Senate race

Herschel Walker’s campaign was sent reeling after Monday night's report that he allegedly paid for a former girlfriend to get an abortion. And before the Georgia Senate campaign had a chance to regain his balance, his son jumped in to deliver another gut punch in real-time.

To the very online crowd, Christian Walker is no stranger. The 23-year-old cuts an interesting profile: He's built a social media brand on the right railing against “woke liberals” and supporting former President Donald Trump. He's also been a booster of his father’s Senate campaign in the past, tweeting about introducing him at an event at Mar-a-Lago and posting other positive messages even before Walker’s Georgia Senate campaign.

That, perhaps, lent credibility to his haymaker of a tweet Monday night.

“I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us. You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence,” he tweeted in a post that got almost 130,000 likes.

Christian Walker has posted a number of statements and videos against his father in the day since the Daily Beast published an article quoting an unnamed former girlfriend who said Herschel Walker wrote her a $700 check to pay for an abortion. Christian Walker said he aims to put an end to the “lies” that Herschel Walker has put forward about his family values and morality, and restated allegations of abuse that his mother has leveled against Herschel Walker.

The campaign has been hit repeatedly by revelations about Walker’s past, including children Walker hadn’t claimed publicly and inflated, inaccurate statements about his businesses. Now, Walker has denied the Daily Beast’s reporting, which POLITICO has not independently verified.

Herschel and Christian Walker have largely existed on different sides of the Internet until now — a good portion of both men’s social media followers may not have realized the two were related until recently. But now, his son has become a central player in the Georgia Senate race just over a month before Election Day.

Why did Christian Walker start trending?

Christian Walker has more than a quarter million followers on Twitter, as well as more than a half-million on Instagram and 165,000 on TikTok, where he quickly amassed social media clout as a “free speech radicalist” on an app with relatively few conservative influencers of a similar brand compared to other platforms.

On Monday night, Christian Walker took to Twitter around the same time as the Daily Beast published its story.

“Every family member of Herschel Walker asked him not to run for office because we all knew (some of) his past,” he wrote in a tweet before unloading on Walker over his relationship with him and his mother.

Herschel Walker later tweeted on Monday night, “I LOVE my son no matter what.”

Christian Walker has been relatively quiet on the subject of his father’s other children in the past. On Tuesday, he uploaded a 4-minute video on Twitter and Instagram further explaining his past silence, writing that he did one campaign event for his father and then did not want to be involved further. His tone was more serious than his usual high-energy rant videos and podcast episodes.

“This is a candidate issue; this is not a me issue,” Christian Walker said in the video. “I wouldn’t have spoken out if there weren’t all these lies every day.”

What has Christian Walker’s previous role in the Georgia Senate race been?

Christian Walker posted an endorsement picture on Instagram with his father in August 2021, and has come to his father’s defense on social media prior to the initial reporting about Walker having fathered other children. He also once sold Herschel 2022 merch on his website, Cancl, though the page has since been deleted.

In Tuesday’s video, Christian Walker said the story behind his previous endorsement of his father was more complicated than those on the right and left made it seem.

“You know nothing about my life. My parents went through a dirty divorce, I went through a lot as a child,” he said. “You don’t know the ebbs and flows of our relationship… So for everyone making these wild theories and whatever, that’s crazy.

What is Christian Walker’s history with social media?

Christian Walker has had a tumultuous time on social media, particularly TikTok, where he had amassed hundreds of thousands of followers in less than a year. He quickly became an outspoken “free-speech radicalist” voice on the app that still has relatively few popular conservative influencers.

He also recently moved from Los Angeles to Miami, leading to a flurry of tweets supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis, even posting a picture with the Republican in August.

Christian Walker’s high-energy tirades, often filmed from his car, ranged from “cancel culture” topics to railing against Pride Month to parroting Trump’s election fraud theories — all of which have often been shot down by angry commenters and parodied by other users.

“‘The rich need to pay their fair share of federal income tax,’” he says mockingly in one older video. “The top 10 percent has paid over 70 percent of federal income tax, sweetheart. So how about you stop smoking weed on the couch all day and you go get a better job.”

He also ran into trouble while a student at the University of California Los Angeles, which put out a statement against his “hurtful language on social media” after fellow undergraduates reported his social media activity. Months later, Christian Walker posted screenshots of other students complaining about him in a class GroupMe, saying the school allowed “your students to treat me like crap” for his conservative beliefs.

In February 2021, Christian Walker’s profile briefly got suspended by the platform, and he has since rebuilt his following to 165,000 people on TikTok. He still garners hundreds of thousands of views per video, but his content has taken a turn from calling out liberals to bashing men who don’t bring enough to their relationships. His audience equally embraced the new bit — all amid commenters asking about Herschel’s other children to no response.

“Your honor, he’s slaying again,” one comment reads. “A broken clock is right two times a day,” other users frequently write under his new videos.

Has Christian Walker mentioned his father’s other children before?

Christian Walker had not previously made direct statements about the allegations against his father, but he has often called out men who have cheated on their spouses on TikTok. Some videos reference other celebrities, like Wild ‘n Out host Nick Cannon, who has fathered 10 children with multiple women, and Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine, whose messages with a woman who is not his wife recently went viral.

The Levine situation merited a 42-minute episode on Christian Walker’s podcast in September, the longest he’s ever recorded.

Some of Christian Walker’s most-viewed videos and comments have focused on men being unfaithful in relationships.

“Fathers, I'm gonna need you to come back from hanging out with your homeboys and banging people that aren’t your wife and take care of your kids and your baby mamas, do you mind?” Christian Walker said in one of his most viral videos last year.

“Get home and raise your kids!” he said in another June video directed at Cannon.

In Tuesday’s post, Christian Walker said he was breaking his silence about the “random kids across the country” who weren’t raised by his father.

“And you know my favorite issue to talk about is father absence. Surprise! Because it affected me,” he said in the video. “That’s why I talk about it all the time.”