Ga. Senate Candidate Herschel Walker Invents His Own Science to Try and Explain Air Pollution

Republican Hershel Walker provided his own interpretation of air pollution at a campaign event over the weekend as he continues his efforts to win the Georgia Senate seat.

"We, in America, have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water of anybody in the world," the College Football Hall of Famer, 60, said as he began discussing climate change.

In 2021, IQAir found air pollution in the United States exceeded World Health Organization guidelines by 2 to 3 times, CNN reported. Just 222 of the 6,475 cities analyzed by the company had average air quality that met WHO's standard.

Walker went on his speech to say, "since we don't control the air, our good air decide to float over to China's bad air. 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 we to clean that back up."

The crowd is heard chuckling along while Walker speaks.

Walker's bizarre pollution theory was presented as an explanation for why Green New Deal investments would be a waste of money. He seemingly argued that the U.S. would be stuck funneling "millions of billions" of dollars toward "cleaning our good air up," allowing China and India to sit back and benefit from it — a statement that is both bigoted and inaccurate.

A spokesperson for Walker did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.

A new report by The Daily Beast detailed that Walker's own aides are deeply distrustful of him, as they describe him in emails and text messages as lying "like he's breathing."

The report alleges that when his campaign aides came to him to discuss rumors that he had secretly fathered a child years ago — a second in addition to his son Christian, with whom he is publicly close — he told them they were false. The aides, however, said that they already had proof.

When the campaign went back to Walker later to discuss whether there were any other children he had not previously made public, Walker, the Beast reports, told his campaign that it was not the case.

The Beast reports that its "account of Walker lying to his own campaign about his children comes from a closely connected adviser and was verified by communications that the source turned over" to the outlet.

"He's lied so much that we don't know what's true," the Beast's source said, while three people interviewed for the Beast's article independently called Walker a "pathological liar."

Walker's "lying" has been witnessed throughout his campaign including the false claim that he graduated from the University of Georgia (which he attended before leaving after his junior season to play football professionally in the short-lived United States Football League) and has said in the past that he was "valedictorian of my class" and "in the top 1 percent of my graduating class in college."

He later lied about lying about graduating from the university.

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He has also claimed to have a COVID-killing spray before vaccines were rolled out (no such spray exists) and has expressed doubts about human evolution, questioning why apes still exist.

Walker has secured the endorsement of former President Donald Trump and has spoken in the past about having dissociative identity disorder.

His ex-wife, Cindy, said that he had violent episodes in their marriage, and has claimed Walker held a gun to her head — which CNN reported earlier that he did not deny, saying he had blackouts and memory loss and did not remember the episodes.