On Monday evening, The Daily Beast dropped the equivalent of a hydrogen bomb on the Georgia Senate race when Roger Sollenberger reported that Republican nominee Herschel Walker paid for a girlfriend to have an abortion. What makes the situation even more surprising is the fact that Mr Walker has supported a total ban on abortion, calling rape, incest and times when the life of the mother is threatened "excuses."
On Monday evening, Mr Walker attempted to do damage control by appearing on Sean Hannity's show. But when he was asked about a get well card in which he sent a $700 check, he vehemently denied paying for an abortion and said "I sent out so many get well, send out so much of anything." When Mr Hannity asked about the money, he said, "I sent out so many get well, send out so much of anything" and said "I send money to a lot of people" before mentioning his scholarship.
(Roger Sollenberger, the reporter who broke the story, later tweeted "Not denying he sent the woman money").
At the same time, his son Christian Walker, a prolific social media star in his own right, publicly disowned his father in a series of tweets, seeming to hint at the allegations that Mr Walker committed domestic abuse.
"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," the younger Mr Walker tweeted, later adding, "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.'"
Mr Walker issued a statement to Twitter overnight in which he called the reporting "a flat-out lie and I deny this in the strongest possible terms". He added that he would sue The Daily Beast over the claim and in a separate tweet said he loved his son "no matter what". The Independent has also reached out to Mr Walker's campaign for further comment.
The news comes just as his opponent, Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, announced that he had raised a whopping $26m in the most recent fundraising quarter, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
It also comes less than two weeks before Mr Warnock and Mr Walker are set to square off in their only scheduled debate. Polling has shown that the race is in a dead heat as Mr Warnock, who won a special election in 2021, is running for a full term.
Of course, it's important to note that all of this happened on Monday evening, likely before Republicans, Democrats and Georgians have time to digest the story, so the ramifications of such a story are still entirely unclear.
But what we do know right now is that this is a product of the GOP's own making. While former president Donald Trump encouraged Mr Walker to run against Mr Warnock–Mr Walker played for the New Jersey Generals when Mr Trump owned the US Football League before going to the NFL–plenty of Republicans got behind him despite his baggage.
While some candidates like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and JD Vance in Ohio catapulted to the Republican nomination after Mr Trump's nomination, Republican elites from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to Minority Whip John Thune got behind Mr Walker last year.
This was likely to avoid an internecine feud among Republican candidates which paved the way for Mr Warnock to win in the first place. But by getting behind Mr Trump's preferred candidate no questions asked, they are now saddled with a candidate who could likely cost them one of their only chances to flip a Senate seat.
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