Herschel Walker confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas
The Senate confirmed former football star Herschel Walker as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas on Tuesday.
President Trump nominated Walker to diplomatic post last yearafter the retired running back entered the political spotlight by running as a Republican candidate in the 2022 Georgia Senate race. He lost to incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock by 2.8 points in a runoff.
Walker is the first ambassador confirmed by the Senate in the Bahamas in over a decade.
Walker won the Heisman Trophy in 1982 with the University of Georgia Bulldogs and played professionally for three years for the New Jersey Generals of the American Football League — a team Mr. Trump purchased toward the end of Walker’s career in the upstart league. After the USFL folded, Walker played in the NFL for over a decade.
He ran for Senate three years ago with the support of Mr. Trump. Walker’s campaign was hampered by charges he paid several women had abortions in the 1990s and 2000s, despite his opposition to this procedure during his electoral campaign. Walker has vehemently denied the allegations.
Walker was also appointed to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition during Mr. Trump’s first term, but was removed from the role under the Biden administration.
“Herschel has spent decades serving as an ambassador to our nation’s youth, our men and women in the military, and athletes at home and abroad,” Mr. Trump wrote in a December Truth Social article nominating Walker to the ambassador role.
Walker and more than 100 other Trump nominees were confirmed Tuesday by a single vote of 51-47, in a the rules change by Senate Republicans, allowing them to approve large groups of executive branch nominees “en bloc” with a simple majority rather than voting on them one by one. They changed the rules in the middle of frustration that Democrats had slowed down the nomination process – even as they accused Republicans of going “nuclear.”
Other high-profile nominees who were approved in Tuesday’s filing include former White House aide Sergio Gor for ambassador to India.
Nominees approved as Senate remained deadlocked due to government shutdown. The body is expected to weigh competing proposals from Democrats and Republicans to reopen the government on Wednesday — but both bills have been repeatedly rejected.
contributed to this report.
