Eliana Willis

Bob Woodward’s recorded excerpts of his conversations with Donald Trump take listeners back to 2020, and make clear just how much of the White House’s fumbling response to Covid-19 came from the president himself.“I feel good. I think we’re doing a great job. I think we’ll never get credit from the fake news media no matter how good a job we do. No matter how good a job I do, I will never get credit from the media, and I’ll never get credit from Democrats who want to beat me desperately in seven months,” Trump told Woodward in an early April interview, days after the economy had shut down to unsuccessfully stop the spread of a virus that would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans that year alone.Trump’s denialism continued into July: “It’s flaring up all over the world, Bob. By the way, all over the world. That was one thing I noticed last week. You know they talk about this country. All over the world, it’s flaring up. But we have it under control.”Later that month, he insisted that he would soon release a plan to fight the virus, but appeared to tie its timing to how it would affect his election chances. “I’ve got 106 days. That’s a long time. You know, if I put out a plan now, people won’t even remember it in a hundred — I won the last election in the last week.”While Woodward agrees with many other observers of the former president that his attempts to overturn the 2020 election make him a danger to democracy, he also makes the case to listeners that Trump didn’t even fully understand how to do his job – and the nation paid the price.“Trump reminds how easy it is to break things you do not understand — democracy and the presidency,” Woodward concludes.What would Republicans do with a majority in the House? Demand concessions in exchange for raising the debt limit, which will likely be necessary at some point next year, Politico reports.GOP lawmakers could demand that the tax cuts passed during the Trump administration are made permanent, or that Social Security and Medicare, the two massive federal benefit programs for older Americans that have long been in Republicans’ crosshairs, are overhauled. But the strategy is a risky one, because without an agreement to lift its legal ability to borrow, Washington could default on its debt – with potentially calamitous implications for the global economy. And even if Republicans took both the House and the Senate, expect tortuous negotiations with Biden to find an agreement.Here’s more from Politico:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Tight Senate margins and a Democratic president would make it impossible for GOP leaders to deliver on the party’s most hardline fiscal wishes, at least with President Joe Biden still in office. The disappointment would surely prompt blowback from right-leaning Republicans already known as the sharpest thorns in the party’s side.
“Spare me if you’re a Republican who puts on your frigging campaign website, ‘Trust me, I will vote for a balanced budget amendment, and I believe we should balance the budget like every family in America.’ No shit,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the pro-Trump Freedom Caucus, said in an interview.
“You have two simple leverage points: when government funding comes up and when the debt ceiling is debated,” Roy reminded his fellow Republicans. “And the only question that matters is, will leadership use that leverage?”There was also new polling today for Ohio, which seems to align with broader national trends for the 8 November midterms.Once considered a swing state, Ohio has become more solidly Republican in recent elections. But that doesn’t mean JD Vance, the GOP candidate for Senate, is running away with the race. Today’s Spectrum News / Siena poll shows him tied with Democrat Tim Ryan, underscoring that for all the momentum Republicans seem to have, retaking the Senate is not a sure bet.Spectrum News / Siena Poll: Ohio Likely VotersDeWine Continues to Hold Very Large Lead over Whaley, 58-34%Vance vs. Ryan Even, 46-46%, Two Weeks to GoVoters Prefer Republicans over Democrats to Control Congress, 40-33%https://t.co/nenKiR8q6o pic.twitter.com/K1MaXlksmQ— SienaResearch (@SienaResearch) October 24, 2022
However, notice the strong bias among Ohio voters towards Republicans on the generic congressional ballot. That matches recent nationwide polling suggesting the GOP has overtaken Democrats as the party preferred to control Congress – an outcome that may well come to pass when the midterm dust settles.There was some dire news for Democrats this morning from The Cook Political Report, which is known for its comprehensive rankings of congressional races across the country.The subject was congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, who is chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee tasked with winning elections in the House of Representatives. Cook changed their rating for his suburban New York City district to toss-up from lean Democrat:House rating change: Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D) moves from Lean D to Toss Up at @CookPolitical as Dems admit the DCCC chair is now in serious danger in #NY17. Full analysis: https://t.co/89bvezbNuw pic.twitter.com/ncljBkSfZw— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 24, 2022
Polls indicate that Democrats are likely to lose their majority in the House in the 8 November midterms, and a loss by Maloney would make an embarrassment of their efforts to stem what appears to be a rising tide of Republican sentiment among voters.We’re 15 days away from the 8 November midterms, but early voting data from across the country indicates a surge in voter enthusiasm, Adam Gabbatt reports – though it’s not yet clear which party is set to benefit:Early voting in the midterm elections is on track to match records set in 2018, according to researchers, as voters take advantage of both in-person and mail-in voting in states across the country.More than 5.8 million people had already cast their vote by Friday evening, CNN reported, a similar total to this stage in the 2018 elections, which had the highest turnout of any midterm vote in a generation.States with closely watched elections, including Georgia, Florida and Ohio, are among those seeing high volumes, with Democrats so far casting early votes in greater numbers.Republicans, including Donald Trump, have encouraged their supporters to vote in person, citing a mishmash of debunked conspiracy theories about election security.The New York Times reported that in-person turnout is up 70% in Georgia, where the incumbent Republican governor is facing a tough challenge from Democrat Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock, the Democratic US senator, is competing with Herschel Walker. As of Friday about 520,000 people had already cast their ballots during in-person early voting, according to Fox5 Atlanta.US midterm elections: early voting on track to match 2018 recordRead moreAttorney general Merrick Garland will this afternoon hold a press conference on a “significant national security matter,” the justice department has announced.The 1:30pm eastern time speech will “discuss significant national security cases addressing malign influence schemes and alleged criminal activity by a nation-state actor in the United States,” and feature Garland along with FBI director Christopher Wray, along with other top justice department officials.The Guardian will cover the press conference on this blog as it happens.From Las Vegas, The Guardian’s Edwin Rios reports on the cost-of-living concerns that are influencing voters in the swing state crucial to the upcoming midterm elections:Claudia Lopez, 39, is worried for her children.As her curly haired seven-year-old daughter bounced around a play area inside El Mercado, a shopping center within the Boulevard Mall in Las Vegas where the smell of arepas and tacos hovers over the shops, Lopez soaked in her day off from knocking on doors and talking to residents about the upcoming election.For much of her life, Lopez, whose parents emigrated from Mexico to California, where she was born, didn’t care for politics. This year, that changed: since Lopez moved to Las Vegas seven years ago, rents have rocketed. In the first quarter of 2022, the Nevada State Apartment Association found that rent had soared, on average, more than 20% compared to the same period last year. That growth has since slowed, but the self-employed house cleaner worries about her children’s future: their safety, their schools, their shelter.“I don’t care about Democrats or Republicans,” Lopez says. “I care about change. I just want change for the better. Everything’s getting worse. You see little kids like, ‘Are they going to live to my age?’”In Nevada, the political stakes of this election are high. Latino voters are projected to account for one for every five potential voters in November, turning the state into a microcosm of the national influence voters of color will have on the election. While Nevada voted Democrat in the last election, its contests were won by slim margins. And as a voting bloc, Latinos are not monolithic: what they care about ranges from immigration to the economy and depends on where throughout the country they live.‘I just care about change’: Nevada’s Latinos on their cost-of-living fearsRead moreTrump isn’t alone in presenting a danger to democracy. As Adam Gabbatt reports, Doug Mastriano is copying many of the former president’s tactics in his campaign for governor of Pennsylvania, from his perpetual lying to his belief in conspiracy theories about the 2020 election:As Pennsylvanians prepare to vote for their next governor, it is no exaggeration to say the future of American democracy is at stake.Doug Mastriano, a retired army colonel who has enthusiastically indulged Donald Trump’s fantasy that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, is the Republican candidate. If he wins, he plans to deregister every single one of Pennsylvania’s 8.7 million voters. In future elections, Mastriano would choose who certifies – or doesn’t – the state’s election results.With Pennsylvania one of the few swing states in presidential elections, Mastriano could effectively have the power to decide the next president. But in a midterm election season defined by Republicans who seem to oppose democracy, there is some evidence that Mastriano, a retired army colonel, could be too fringe even for the Republican party.Mastriano is, by most measures, an extremist.Doug Mastriano: is the Trump-backed election denier too extreme to win?Read moreBob Woodward’s recorded excerpts of his conversations with Donald Trump take listeners back to 2020, and make clear just how much of the White House’s fumbling response to Covid-19 came from the president himself.“I feel good. I think we’re doing a great job. I think we’ll never get credit from the fake news media no matter how good a job we do. No matter how good a job I do, I will never get credit from the media, and I’ll never get credit from Democrats who want to beat me desperately in seven months,” Trump told Woodward in an early April interview, days after the economy had shut down to unsuccessfully stop the spread of a virus that would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans that year alone.Trump’s denialism continued into July: “It’s flaring up all over the world, Bob. By the way, all over the world. That was one thing I noticed last week. You know they talk about this country. All over the world, it’s flaring up. But we have it under control.”Later that month, he insisted that he would soon release a plan to fight the virus, but appeared to tie its timing to how it would affect his election chances. “I’ve got 106 days. That’s a long time. You know, if I put out a plan now, people won’t even remember it in a hundred — I won the last election in the last week.”While Woodward agrees with many other observers of the former president that his attempts to overturn the 2020 election make him a danger to democracy, he also makes the case to listeners that Trump didn’t even fully understand how to do his job – and the nation paid the price.“Trump reminds how easy it is to break things you do not understand — democracy and the presidency,” Woodward concludes.Good morning, US politics blog readers. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has released more excerpts from his interviews with Donald Trump in 2020, and closes with this warning: “Trump is an unparalleled danger.” Describing him as “overwhelmed by the job” while in office as Covid-19 spread across the United States, Woodward warns that Trump continues to pursue “a seditious conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 election – and end democracy itself. While Woodward is far from the first person to say that, the journalist’s opinion is uniquely informed, given that the two men spoke 20 times during the last year of his presidency.Here’s a look at what’s happening today:
Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis will face his Democratic challenger Charlie Crist for the only debate of the election at 7pm ET.
Joe Biden will hold a rally today at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at 1pm.
Poll tracker FiveThirtyEight downgraded Democrats’ chances of keeping control of the Senate over the weekend, lowering it to 55% amid a wave of polls that signal several of its candidates may be in trouble. More

Ted Cruz took refuge in supply closet during January 6 riot, book revealsTexas senator wrote he ‘vehemently disagreed’ with colleagues’ call to allow certification of 2020 election As a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol during the January 6 attack in a desperate attempt to keep him in the Oval Office, Ted Cruz hid in a closet next to a stack of chairs, but he never thought twice about continuing to sow doubt about the former president’s electoral defeat, the Republican senator from Texas has revealed.Cruz revealed his whereabouts on the day of the deadly Capitol attack – which unsuccessfully aimed to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election – in a new book. The news was first reported by Newsweek.The book – titled Justice Corrupted – recounts how Cruz was listening to his colleague James Lankford of Oklahoma speak in the Senate chamber when a terrible commotion erupted outside. Capitol police rushed in to escort Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, whom the mob wanted to hang, off the dais, and the session was paused.“In the fog of the confusion, it was difficult to tell exactly what was happening,” Cruz wrote. “We were informed that a riot had broken out and that rioters were attempting to breach the building.“At first, Capitol Police instructed us to remain on the Senate floor. And so we did. Then, a few minutes later, they instructed us to evacuate rapidly.”Cruz said he was met with hot tempers after he and his fellow senators were led to a secure location, with some blaming him and his allies in the chamber “explicitly for the violence that was occurring”. After all, Cruz was among those who had helped spread the ousted Republican president’s lies that the election had been stolen from him, fueling the mob that now was invading the Capitol.“While we waited for the Capitol to be secured, I assembled our coalition in a back room (really, a supply closet with stacked chairs) to discuss what we should do next,” Cruz continued, according to Newsweek.Cruz said several of those in his coalition wanted to suspend their objections to the certification, but he “vehemently disagreed”.“I understood the sentiment,” Cruz added. “But … I urged my colleagues that the course of action we were advocating was the right and principled one.”Cruz later was one of just six Republican senators who voted against certifying Trump’s electoral college defeat in Arizona. He was one of seven GOP senators who voted against certifying Trump’s electoral college loss in Pennsylvania.Such stances have helped make Cruz unpalatable in some quarters. He attended a baseball playoff game Sunday between his home state’s Houston Astros and the New York Yankees in the Bronx.One cellphone video showed New York fans roundly booing Cruz, flipping him off and cursing him out, including one who called him a “loser,” before the Astros won and eliminated the Yankees.Officials have since linked nine deaths, including suicides among traumatized law enforcement officers, to the Capitol attack. More than 900 rioters have been charged in connection with the attack, some with seditious conspiracy.In a series of televised hearings this year, a bipartisan US House committee has publicly aired evidence seeking to establish that Trump had a direct role in the Capitol attack. That committee recently issued a subpoena to the former president ordering him to testify before the panel as well as produce documents.Cruz’s term doesn’t end until 2025, meaning his office is not at risk during the 8 November midterm elections in which Biden’s fellow Democrats are trying to preserve thin numerical advantages in both congressional chambers.TopicsTed CruzUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Trump signed statement alleging voter fraud knowing it was false, judge saysDocument was part of lawsuit challenging results of 2020 election in Georgia Donald Trump signed a legal statement alleging voter fraud in the 2020 election despite being told the numbers underpinning the case were false, a federal judge said on Wednesday.The disclosure was made by the US district judge David Carter, who ordered John Eastman, a former Trump lawyer, to provide more emails to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.Eastman was one of Trump’s attorneys when the former president and his allies challenged his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.The legal document was part of a lawsuit by Trump’s team challenging the results in Georgia, a state Trump narrowly lost to Biden, in which they claimed a Georgia county had improperly counted more than 10,000 votes of dead people, felons and unregistered voters.‘Where’s the beef?’: special master says Trump’s Mar-a-Lago records claims lack substanceRead moreIn an 18-page opinion, Carter said that the former president had “signed a verification swearing under oath” that the inaccurate fraud numbers were “true and correct” or “believed to be true and correct” to the best of his knowledge.“The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” the judge wrote, adding: “The Court finds that these emails are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.”Carter previously ruled that Eastman and Trump had probably committed a felony by trying to pressure his then vice-president, Mike Pence, to obstruct Congress.The ruling was made in a lawsuit filed by Eastman to block disclosure of the emails to the January 6 select committee, following a congressional subpoena.Carter previously ordered Eastman to provide over 200 emails to the committee, after the lawyer resisted the subpoena and claimed that the communications were privileged.The judge said on Wednesday that the vast majority of emails still being sought by congressional investigators should not be handed over, as legal protections given to attorneys and their clients apply to the records.He said eight emails that would normally be shielded under those protections must be given to the committee, after he found that the communications were in furtherance of a crime – one of the few times those legal safeguards can be lifted.Carter found that four emails show that Eastman and other lawyers suggested that the “primary goal” of filing lawsuits was to delay Congress’s certification of the 2020 election results.The judge said four other emails “demonstrate an effort by President Trump and his attorneys to press false claims in federal court for the purpose of delaying the January 6 vote”.At one point, Eastman wrote that although the former president had signed documents related to a lawsuit in Georgia on 1 December, “he has since been made aware that some of the allegations (and evidence proffered by the experts) has been inaccurate. For him to sign a new verification with that knowledge (and incorporation by reference) would not be accurate.”Carter wrote: “President Trump and his attorneys ultimately filed the complaint with the same inaccurate numbers without rectifying, clarifying, or otherwise changing them.”Trump and his allies filed over 60 lawsuits challenging the 2020 election, with some complaints alleging voter fraud without evidence to support those claims. Those cases were overwhelmingly rejected by judges, some of which Trump appointed to the federal courts.The January 6 select committee last week voted to subpoena Trump in its investigation. It is expected to issue a report in the coming weeks on its findings.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

In the lead-up to the US midterm elections, the Guardian’s Oliver Laughland travels to Indiana, the first US state to pass a new abortion ban into law following the overturning of Roe v Wade. Can Democrats who are campaigning on the issue make inroads at the ballot box? And why are the Republicans who voted for it so reluctant to talk about it?

Biden vows to codify Roe if Democrats win midterms More

Steve Bannon: justice department urges six-month prison term in contempt caseFormer Trump strategist found guilty of criminal contempt of Congress for ignoring subpoena from Capitol attack committee Steve Bannon should be sentenced to six months in prison and a $200,000 fine for “his sustained, bad-faith contempt of Congress”, the justice department said in a legal filing on Monday.Bannon, the former Donald Trump White House strategist, was found guilty on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress in July for ignoring a subpoena from the US House committee investigating the January 6 attack.‘Devoid of shame’: January 6 cop Michael Fanone on Trump’s Republican partyRead moreBannon faces up to a year in prison on each count on which he was found guilty. The punishment proposed Monday is at the “top end” of government sentencing guidelines and was needed because Bannon “consistently acted in bad faith and with the purpose of frustrating the committee’s work”, US justice department prosecutors wrote.They said Bannon had refused to cooperate with the committee in any way, except for instances in which he attempted a quid pro quo of exchanging information for dismissal of his criminal case.Bannon’s “contempt of Congress was absolute and undertaken in bad faith”, prosecutors added in the filing, which was submitted ahead of the ex-Trump adviser’s scheduled sentencing Friday. “To date, he remains in default: more than one year after accepting service of the committee’s subpoena, [Bannon] has not produced a single document or answered a single deposition question – nor has he endeavored to do so, except as part of a duplicitous quid pro quo.”Earlier this month, the FBI interviewed Timothy Heaphy, a senior investigator on the January 6 committee. Heaphy told an FBI agent that just before Bannon’s trial this summer, Bannon’s lawyer Evan Corcoran contacted him. Corcoran wanted to see if the committee would be willing to support a dismissal of Bannon’s charges in exchange for testimony, according to a document filed in court. Heaphy declined, since the committee was not involved in criminal charges and said he had not heard from Bannon’s lawyer since.The filing details numerous instances over the last several months in which Bannon dangled the prospect of cooperation with the committee in exchange for delaying and dismissing criminal charges against him.“His noncompliance has been complete and unremitting,” the justice department wrote. “And his effort to exact a quid pro quo with the committee to persuade the Department of Justice to delay trial and dismiss the charges against him should leave no doubt that his contempt was deliberate and continues to this day.”Prosecutors’ filing also said Bannon had refused to provide financial information to the probation office as part of its effort to evaluate what kind of fine he could pay. Bannon has said he would pay the maximum punishment instead.“Rather than disclose his financial records, a requirement with which every other defendant found guilty of a crime is expected to comply, [Bannon] informed [sentencing investigators] that he would prefer instead to pay the maximum fine,” the justice department argued. “So be it.”Prosecutors also pointed to Bannon’s comments on his podcast in which he used violent and intimidating rhetoric against members of the committee. “We’re going medieval on these people, we’re going to savage our enemies,” he said in one July appearance.“Through his public platforms, [Bannon] has used hyperbolic and sometimes violent rhetoric to disparage the committee’s investigation, personally attack the committee’s members, and ridicule the criminal justice system,” the filing said. “The … statements prove that his contempt was not aimed at protecting executive privilege or the constitution, rather it was aimed at undermining the committee’s efforts to investigate an historic attack on government.”The January 6 committee, which has relied heavily on testimony from former Trump administration official, held what was likely its final public hearing last week. It ended the meeting by voting 9-0 to subpoena Trump.The department is also pursuing criminal charges against Peter Navarro, another Trump White House adviser, who has refused to comply with the committee’s subpoena.TopicsSteve BannonDonald TrumpUS politicsUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsnewsReuse this content More

In a video shown to the January 6 committee, Roger Stone calls Donald Trump’s daughter an ‘abortionist bitch’ amid his fury at not being pardoned for his activities around the Capitol attack. The Republican operative also says Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband and, like her, an adviser to the former president in the White House, ‘has an IQ of 70’. The video was shot by Danish film-maker Christoffer Guldbrandsen and shown in Thursday’s dramatic hearing

Roger Stone slammed Ivanka Trump after not getting pardoned, video shows More

Roger Stone slammed Ivanka Trump after not getting pardoned, video showsRepublican operative calls Trump an ‘abortionist bitch’ in video released by film-maker who provided footage to January 6 panel00:29In video released by a Danish film-maker who provided footage to the January 6 committee, Roger Stone, furious he will not be pardoned for his activities around the Capitol attack, is seen to call Ivanka Trump an “abortionist bitch”.Could Trump testify? Subpoena sets up prospect of dramatic political spectacleRead moreThe Republican operative also says Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband and like her an adviser to Donald Trump in the White House, “has an IQ of 70”.The video was shot by Christoffer Guldbrandsen, whose footage of Stone was shown in Thursday’s dramatic January 6 hearing. Then, Stone was shown saying: “I say fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.”The clip in which Stone rants about Ivanka and Kushner was selected but not shown by the committee. First reported by the Daily Beast, the clip shows Stone on the phone in the back of a car on a highway, visibly shaking with anger.“Jared Kushner has an IQ of 70,” he says. “He’s coming to Miami. We will eject him from Miami very quickly; he will be leaving very quickly. Very quickly.”Like Donald Trump, Kushner and Ivanka Trump moved to Florida after their time in Washington, rather than move back to New York.Stone continued: “He has 100 security guards. I will have 5,000 security guards. You want to fight. Let’s fight. Fuck you.”Stone added: “Fuck you and your abortionist bitch daughter.”Gulbrandsen, the Beast said, said there was “no doubt” who Stone was talking about.Stone is a strategist, author and self-confessed dirty trickster. He has long been associated with Donald Trump, through the businessman’s many flirtations with politics and since his election win in 2016.In 2019, Stone was indicted during the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.Stone was convicted on seven counts of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. The charges related to his links to Trump’s campaign and to WikiLeaks, which released Democratic party emails obtained by Russian hackers on the same day Trump was shown to have bragged about assaulting women.Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison. In December 2020, Trump granted him clemency.Gulbrandsen told the Beast the clip of Stone ranting on his phone was from 20 January 2021, the day of Joe Biden’s inauguration.Stone’s activities around the Capitol attack and links to the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, far-right groups involved in the riot, have been scrutinised by the January 6 committee. Stone appeared in front of investigators but invoked his fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination.06:25Gulbrandsen told the Beast: “Roger Stone has been holding out for a pardon till the very last minute. He had first written up a memo … with a plan about encouraging Trump to pardon the lawmakers who had voted against certifying [Biden’s win], and Roger Stone, and some of his clients.”The film-maker said Stone reduced his wishlist to pardons for himself and Bernie Kerik, a close associate, but was “very upset” when no pardon came.Gulbrandsen said: “Aside from Donald Trump [Stone] also held Jared Kushner responsible as being the guy who was the point man on the pardon.”The Beast has also reported that Gulbrandsen recorded Matt Gaetz, the Republican congressman from Florida, telling Stone “the boss still has a very favorable view of you”.Stone said: “I’ll go down hard, though. I’ll fight it right to the bitter end.”Gaetz said: “Yeah, but I don’t think you’re going to go down at all at the end of the day.”Guldbrandsen’s documentary, A Storm Foretold, has been extensively trailed and examined – but not yet released.TopicsRoger StoneUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsIvanka TrumpJared KushnernewsReuse this content More

The Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker addressed his past claims about being a law enforcement officer by producing what he said was a police badge. The former college football and NFL star, who is endorsed by Donald Trump, was accused of ‘pretending to be a police officer’ by his rival, Democratic senator Raphael Warnock, during a debate on Friday. Saying ‘I have to respond to that,’ Walker produced his badge. Walker has never been a trained law enforcement officer, though he has law enforcement endorsements 

Herschel Walker denies abortion ban support and brandishes ‘police badge’ in Georgia debate More