Trump says he'll put ex-NFL player in charge of US missile shield
(The Hill) - Former President Trump told supporters Sunday that he wants to put former NFL player and failed GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker in charge of a new missile defense shield if elected.
Walker, a staunch ally of Trump, appeared at a rally in Macon, Ga., where he flubbed the GOP presidential candidate’s name twice.
“It is time for it to stop, and it stops on Tuesday when we vote for my friend, and your friend, Donald Trump Jr. — Donald Trump. Jonald J. Trump,” Walker said at the end of his speech.
Trump, who spoke after Walker, said if elected, he would “build a missile defense shield all made in the USA,” and “put Herschel Walker in charge of that little sucker.”
Trump over the past year has declared that he would create an “Iron Dome” for the United States in a second term, referring to the missile defense system used by Israel.
On Sunday, he said “a lot of” such a system would be built in Georgia.
But Iron Dome is used against short-range missiles, and any such system built to protect the U.S. mainland would come with an astronomical price tag and little use in stopping mid- to long-range missiles, such as from North Korea or Russia.
It is unclear if Trump meant Walker would be in charge of overseeing all U.S. missile defenses or the process of building a new system.
Walker spent 12 seasons in the NFL beginning in the late 1980s before retiring and pursuing business ventures in food processing, with no experience in missile defense or national security.
He eventually made his way to politics and served under Trump as a co-chair of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition from 2019 to 2020. Walker launched his first political campaign in Georgia's 2022 Senate election, during which he supported finishing Trump’s southern border wall and for Washington to “heavily invest” in the military.
Walker’s campaign, however, was plagued by controversies and baffling and false statements. He mistakenly said there were 52 states, falsely claimed he was once an FBI agent, and lied about graduating from the University of Georgia, when in reality he had left to play professional football and did not complete his degree.