Christian Walker Opens Up About 'Rough' Childhood with Herschel as Dad — And Blowing Up His Senate Campaign (2024)

Christian Walker is going into depth about his father, former football star Herschel Walker, after he lost his bid for a Georgia Senate seat on Tuesday.

Speaking to Buzzfeed News for an interview conducted the morning after the runoff election, Christian said the campaign has led him to ruminate on what he described as a "rough" childhood due to Herschel's violent tendencies.

Christian's mother is Cindy DeAngelis Grossman, who married the former Dallas Cowboys running back in 1983. The two divorced in 2002 and court records show she received a protective order in 2005 after, she says, her ex-husband held a gun to her head.

"Childhood was really rough with him," Christian told Buzzfeed of life with his dad. "It almost might have been better in my circ*mstance if he was not present at all, but he was around."

But things got better in recent years, Christian told the outlet, saying the relationship "definitely wasn't tumultuous."

"If anything, it was in a good position," he added.

As Christian explained to Buzzfeed, though, he and those close to his father begged the former athlete not to run for the Georgia Senate seat, largely out of fear of his past coming back to haunt him — and his family members.

But his father, at the urging of some prominent Republicans including former President Donald Trump, went forward with a campaign, one that would eventually grow to be rife with controversies, including reports that Herschel had secretly fathered children other than Christian.

But the breaking point for Christian came when his father, who has been staunchly anti-abortion while on the campaign trail, denied that he had paid for his former girlfriends' abortions in years past.

Shortly after Herschel denied that he even knew the first woman to make the claims, Christian took to social media to say his father was "lying," suggesting that the Republican's family had been privy to his violent and deceitful behavior for years.

"I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us," Christian, 23, wrote on Twitter in October.

He continued, "You're not a 'family man' when you left us to bang a bunch of women," and claimed that Herschel "threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence."

In another tweet, Christian wrote: "I don't care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you're some 'moral, Christian, upright man.' You've lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you."

Following Christian's explosive rant, Herschel fired off a tweet that did not address his son's allegations but simply said, "I LOVE my son no matter what."

Speaking to Buzzfeed, Christian now adds that his dad's denials were "lie after lie after lie at the expense of our family, so this was just the final straw."

"You just lie about it and you smear the woman," the right-wing social media personality told the outlet. "I feel like I sound like a liberal right now — 'smear the woman' and all that — but that's what happened."

The younger Walker told Buzzfeed his outspokenness on his dad's deceit shouldn't be blamed for the Republican's campaign loss. Instead, he said it was his dad's own behavior, which has been written about at length — including in Herschel's own memoir — that should be blamed.

"What was so funny to me is people that were like, 'Christian Walker's taking down the campaign!'" Christian told Buzzfeed. "No, they took the campaign down by saying a bunch of stupid crap, by lying, by running a candidate who's a domestic abuser. I didn't do anything. All of the scandals were already out there."

He continued: "Did I give any new information? Literally, I did not. I said nothing new. We all already knew all of the scandals. So no, they blew the campaign up by running a dumb campaign. I did nothing."