CLAY: I am in Atlanta, G…A… Buck is down in the Florida Keys. And joining me here in the studio is the next senator from the great state of Georgia. He is Herschel Walker. And, Herschel, I want to start kind of here. You obviously won a National Championship playing football at Georgia. You’re used to being liked in the state of Georgia.

But, man, it’s amazing how when you decided to become a Republican Senate candidate, suddenly the media’s coming after you like crazy. How do you think they’d be treating you if you were running exact same person, obviously, but you’re a Democrat running for the Senate in Georgia? How much different would the treatment be?

WALKER: I think they would absolutely love me if I was a Democrat running. They would love me, and I’d have all the great articles written about me, and I’d be going around, like, just waving at the crowd like I’m a pageant model and stuff. It would be awesome. I think being a Republican running, I’m good with that as well.

CLAY: What are you seeing here as you go around and hear people? I know there’s talk of the federal gas tax getting repealed. Reverend Raphael Warnock’s trying to pretend that he hasn’t voted for everything Joe Biden wants. What are the people of Georgia saying when you’re going out and seeing ’em all over the place?

WALKER: There’s no doubt that the gas is a big, big problem. This economy is really making everyone stand up and take notice. Not just afford gas but I think the problem you have is people live paycheck to paycheck where I’m from and now they gotta pay a hundred dollars for gas that only take them part of the week. And then you gotta buy groceries, try to save money for your rent, gotta save money for your car note.

That really, really gets expensive. People worried about that and with them coming with all these gimmicks. These are gimmicks trying to get a vote, trying to pretend that they care. If Biden cared and Warnock cared they’d go ahead and give us energy independence again. That’s one thing they gotta tell the people, if they really care about what’s happening to this country, they would make us energy independent again, and remove some of the restrictions from these leases that he says he’s given to everyone, that they can drill on. But he did not tell people that these leases have so many restrictions on it that they can’t even drill. So, he’s not telling the whole truth. And I think if they care they’d do something like that.

BUCK: Hey, Herschel, it’s Buck. Thanks, obviously, for being with us. Really appreciate it. The reality of crime nationwide has gotten a lot more attention in recent months, I think, because not only did we go through a 30% one-year increase in homicides nationwide recently but this year in a number of major cities it’s actually up over the ’20 to ’21 period, right? So, it’s continuing and even exceeding the previous records. There was a whole narrative here of defund the police from Democrats.

There was a narrative that was pushed by the Black Lives Matter movement that ending mass incarceration, which means — that’s the phrase they use — less prosecution, more criminals let out sooner or not prosecuted at all, that somehow this was going to achieve justice. What it has achieved is a lot of disorder, crime, and anarchy on the streets. Do you think that the sentiment in your home state of Georgia has changed on that and do you think there’s anything that as a senator, I mean, just even from the perspective of speaking the truth about this and having a counternarrative you would want to do in the Senate on the issue of crime?

WALKER: Well, you know, one thing I want to do is I want to hold us to our Constitution. I think the problem we have, we’ve come so far and people forget about this. We have a rule of law. And I was thinking about something. I was at a Juneteenth celebration last night, and I say Martin Luther King brought us to a certain point, and now it’s up to all the leaders who we’ve elected to office that are black to take us even further.

But yet they’ve done absolutely nothing but at least look out for themselves. So, we need leaders to advance us, not to take us back, not to look in the rearview mirror, ’cause that seems to be the whole new thing I’m looking at. This country we have a rule of law, and we’re not standing by that rule of law. We’ve put judges, we’ve put DAs and also they’re letting criminals out. There are some people that don’t deserve to walk among decent people. They just can’t get along with people like that.

And when you see crime the way it picked up right now, you gotta not fund the police, we gotta have their backs. There’s one of the things I think they decided to do, oh, we made a big mistake by defunding the police so now we’re gonna fund them but you still got it wrong. You gotta have their backs meaning when you arrest someone you gotta keep ’em in jail. They’re letting people out of jail as soon as the officer arrests them so you don’t even have their back. So why do you want to become an officer? I think that’s the problem we’re having.

CLAY: Herschel, one of the great things about sports is whether you’re black, white, Asian, or Hispanic everybody comes together to try to find a best way for a team to succeed. I would bet in Georgia that you’re meeting a lot of black, white, Asian, Hispanic people who don’t really consider themselves to be political, but they just know things aren’t working right. Are you seeing that a lot when you’re going around the state?

WALKER: You know what’s on so on funny, anyone in American can see things are not working right. And if they want to be blind, you can be blind if they want to. When you see the gas prices the way they are right now you know it’s not right. You can try to lie to yourself or try to make excuses. And that’s what’s so good about this here. It got nothing to do with color. It gotta do with these policies they released on the state of Georgia that they released on this country. The policies are Joe Biden policies, they’re policies that Warnock voted on.

You know, he can try to escape that as much as he want but 97% of the time he voted along with Biden. So, that tells you is he looking at the policy, doesn’t care, or he’s just going along with whatever somebody tells him to do? Because when you look at these policies, they do not work. I don’t care what color you are. They do not work. You know, as I was saying early on, I said you look at what’s going on. The people that are hurt are people from my little area. People that can’t afford to buy a $60,000 electric car. They can’t afford to go out and pay a hundred dollars for gas that can only take them part of the week. They can’t afford to do some of the things they’re doing right now.

BUCK: Speaking to Herschel Walker. He’s a Senate candidate in the state of Georgia and obviously also one of the greatest running backs of all time. Herschel, to anybody in the state of Georgia — we got a big Georgia listening audience — who is an independent or maybe even a disaffected Democrat — we’d love to get as many of those as possible — what do you tell them is gonna be different from what they’ve been getting in terms of their representation as Georgians at the federal government from Raphael Warnock?

WALKER: Well, what they gonna get different, I want them to know that don’t think they abandoned their party by voting for me because their party abandoned them. They’re not abandoning their party because they’re voting for me. What they’re doing is they’re voting for someone that care about this country and I care about them because they’re my family. I don’t care what color you are, you’re my family, and I was taught from my parents: Take care of your family.

Right now, my family is hurting. They’re hurting from the crime on the street. They’re hurting from this border being wide open. They’re hurting from the gas prices. They’re hurting from the grocery prices. But those are things I want to fight because I’m not here to put another feather in my cap. I’m not here to try to get a pat on my back. I’m not here to make friends in the Senate and be walking around eating dinners.

What I want to do is get this country fixed and that’s what I told people when I was gonna run. There’s other things I could be doing right now. But I know I can beat Senator Warnock; he knows that as well. If he didn’t know that, they wouldn’t be going after me like they’re going after me because they never worry about fixing what’s going on, but yet they want to continue to talk about me rather than talking about the gas prices. Continuing to talk about me rather than talking about you can’t eat. Continue to talk about me rather than fixing the border.

There are so many things that they have to do that they can get done. It’s simple. That’s what’s so funny. This is simple. If you want to get the gas prices right, let’s start drilling in our own country. Let’s take care of ourselves. Want to get the border right? At least go down and look at the laws on the book. I think the vice president supposed to be down there fixing the border. Where is she at today? You know, she’s not even trying. That’s what makes me so angry, they’re not even trying to make it better and they’re making excuses that they’re not doing it.

CLAY: Herschel, I know you’re not running against Stacey Abrams; Brian Kemp is. I love the state of Georgia. I spend a lot of time down here. Obviously, I live in Tennessee. I wish my Volunteers would win a few more games against your Bulldogs. We’ll see if that ever happens.

WALKER: That may not happen soon, but that’s okay.

CLAY: But she said Georgia was the worst state in the United States, and Warnock is running alongside Stacey Abrams.

WALKER: Yes.

CLAY: They’re a team just like you and Brian Kemp are a team right now running this fall. What did you think, as somebody who grew up in Georgia and had a spent much of your life here, when she said Georgia was the worst state in the country?

WALKER: Well, it was totally insulting. It was insulting because she said the worst state that you know of, and yet you’re running for office here. And then how Senator Warnock running right along with him. I was at a police banquet. And what was so funny about that, they invited Ms. Abrams and invited Senator Warnock. Neither one of them showed up. They didn’t show up to support the police. We gotta support our men and women in blue.

Like it or not, they work for so little yet they do so much and you don’t want to support them? And I said that is a problem. I want people of Georgia to know that. If you want to get Georgia back together, you want to get this country back together, you gotta vote for people that believes in this country. And if you don’t believe in the country, leave and go somewhere else. If it’s the worst state, why are you here? Why don’t you leave, go to another? There’s, what, 51 more other states you can go to. You don’t have to be here.

CLAY: We’re talking to Herschel Walker. He is running for the Senate in Georgia, and he would help to flip the power in the Senate, get to 51 votes in the Senate. It could make a big difference. Like you said, Stacey Abrams, a lot of other states she could choose to live in, 49 of them and maybe District of Columbia. I know the Democrats want to make D.C. and Puerto Rico states: so, before they’re done, 51, 52, who knows. Need Herschel Walker in there in the Senate. Good luck. I appreciate the time. I know how busy you are. Appreciate you coming in studio with us here in Atlanta today.

WALKER: Thank you. And thank you guys, and happy anniversary.

CLAY: Thank you.

WALKER: It’s your first birthday.

CLAY: First birthday. It’s anniversary too. I think it counts both. Thank you.