Georgia Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate Raphael Warnock will be facing Republican Herschel Walker in a runoff election on Dec. 6. And in advance of that, Walker is on the campaign trail making some very weird, incoherent statements to appeal to voters, including a speech Wednesday where he talked about the horror film “Fright Night” and used it as an incoherent political parable.
Now in case you’re wondering why there’s a runoff, it’s because Warnock came in first in that state’s U.S. senate race last week with 49.43%, clearly defeating Walker, who got 48.51%. If this were any other state, Warnock would therefore have already been declared the winner. However, Georgia is the only state in the nation that requires a runoff election if no one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, and since the race had three candidates, one of whom received 2.07% of the vote, now there will be a runoff between the top 2.
If you’re curious what the stakes are, while Democrats already control the Senate thanks to winning 50 seats already, Warnock would provide them with actual control of Senate committees — currently the 50-50 split means Republicans have the same number of committee members as Democrats. Walker is also a huge supporter of Donald Trump and has appeared to embrace much of Trump’s more dangerous and nutty conspiracy theories — and that’s in addition to all of the brazen, blatant lying he does constantly.
So, when he isn’t lying constantly about secret children and the abortions he’s paid for, Walker also watches old movies. We know this because of the stump speech today talking about “Fright Night.”
“I’m gonna tell you, keep the faith. I was here watching a stupid movie, late at night, hope it’s gonna get better but you keep watching it anyway? … I was watching this movie called ‘Fright Night,’ ‘Freak Night,’ it’s some kind of night,” he said.
Walker began to explain the plot but got distracted by some lore questions: “But it was about vampires. I don’t know if you know vampires are some cool people, are they not? But I’m gonna tell you something that I found out. A werewolf can kill a vampire, did you know that? I never knew that, so I didn’t want to be a vampire no more, I want to be a werewolf.”
Honestly, we can’t disagree there.
Brief aside: We don’t know if Walker is talking about the 1985 original film, or the 2011 remake, but we’ll assume for the purpose of this article he’s referring to the original. So, in “Fright Night” a vampire (Chris Sarandon) moves next door to Charley (William Ragsdale), so Charley enlists Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowell), the host of a local TV horror movie show called “Fright Night,” to help kill the vampire. They eventually break into the vampire’s house to confront him, armed with garlic, wooden stakes, holy water and crosses. However, it turns out Peter isn’t a believer, so the cross and holy water don’t work. Charley however is a believer, so they actually do work for him. It’s a really great movie and everyone reading this should watch it.
There’s more to it, but we just wanted to explain precisely what it is Walker is attempting to describe before we quote him.
“What was funny is, this kid had a vampire in their attic… so this actor comes in their home. He got all the right stuff… gotta have the stake, gotta have the thing to kill ’em in the heart, and you got a necklace of garlic, ’cause that works, I don’t know what it does but it works. Gotta have a cross, ’cause it burns, I know that works. And then all of a sudden, this is what’s so funny about it, they’re walking through the house, this guy’s got the holy water, he’s blessing the house,” Walker said.
“Now this is an actor, he’s all fake, he’s blessing the house with his holy water. They walked upstairs, and this vampire, looking real good in this black suit — whoah now that sounds like Senator Warnock now, doesn’t it?” Walker joked.
“Looking real good in this black suit, floated from the ceiling, he floated from the ceiling looking good, and cool. And I’m thinking, whoah, you better get out of your house. If somebody floats from the ceiling get out of the house, that’s not your house. But, as he floated by the ceiling, the kid jumped behind our hero, and as he jumped behind the hero, the guy jumped in front of him with the holy water, thrown it on him, on the vampire’s forehead. He covers his eyes. Then he took his hand away. He started laughing. He said, ‘that don’t work.’ He took the cross, put it on his forehead, on the vampire’s forehead, and the vampire didn’t even do anything,” Walker continued.
Then Walker attempted to make this into a parable. “Now he said, ‘that don’t work,’ and that’s the way it is in our life. It doesn’t work, unless you got faith… we gotta have faith in our fellow brother, gotta have faith in this country, gotta have faith in the elected officials. And right now that’s the reason I’m here.”
We’ve listened to this a bunch of times and cannot figure out what the hell this metaphor is attempting to illuminate. We assume “fellow brother” is garlic, “this country” is holy water and “elected officials” is a cross. But we have no idea who is supposed to be the vampire, who is Charley, and who is Peter Vincent. Is Walker saying that he’s a cross and the voters are vampire hunters? Is he saying he’s the vampire hunter and the voters are holy water?
We have no idea. Watch the clip above.