Herschel Walker's head-scratching answer on Green New Deal, China's 'bad air' draws criticism

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GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker was roundly criticized Monday for his argument against climate legislation like the Green New Deal.

Walker said during a campaign stop in Hall County, Georgia on Saturday that such billion-dollar laws would indirectly reward China and other major polluters. He said, under the Green New Deal, clean U.S. air would ultimately be sent to China and dirty Chinese air would then contaminate American skies. 

"We, in America, have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water of anybody in the world," he told a group of supporters. "So, what we are going to do is put, from the Green New Deal, millions, billions of dollars cleaning our good air up. So, all of the sudden China and India, they put nothing to clean that situation up."

"Since we don't control the air, our good air decides to float over to China's bad air," Walker continued. "So, when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So, it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got to clean that back up."

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Twitter users responded to the Republican candidate's remarks, roasting him for apparently misunderstanding climate policy.

"Are you kidding me? Is this a skit? Has the GOP really descended to this?" left-wing MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan tweeted.

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Ben Adler, a senior editor at Yahoo News, tweeted that American air is clean thanks to the Clean Air Act of 1970.

"It's curious how Republicans often cite the cleanliness of American air as a reason we don't need the Green New Deal," he tweeted. "How do they think the air got so clean? It was a lot dirtier before the Clean Air Act."

Another Twitter user poked fun at Walker, referencing the candidate's previous false claims that he had graduated from the University of Georgia. Walker left the college early to pursue a professional football career.

Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate nominee in Georgia, speaks during a campaign rally in Macon, Georgia, on Wednesday, May 18, 2022.  (Photographer: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"The degree Herschel Walker didn't get from UGA clearly wasn't in climate sciences," Robert Maguire, the research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, tweeted.

Others suggested the remarks were caused by brain damage from Walker's long football career.

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"Please, people, I beg of you, take CTE seriously," Bradley Moss, a lawyer, tweeted.

Walker's race against incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., is currently rated as a "toss up" by Cook Political Report. Recent polls show the two candidates in a tightly contested race, according to RealClear Politics.

Walker's campaign didn't respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.