Latest / Apple News Today / Understanding the controversy around Herschel Walker

Transcript

Understanding the controversy around Herschel Walker · Apple News Today

• 0:00
  [MUSIC FADES IN]
• 0:01
  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Thursday, October 6th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
• 0:02
  [MUSIC FADES OUT]
• 0:03
  A critical Senate battle has had some major developments in recent days, so it's a good time to catch up on a race that might determine control of the Senate. Republican Herschel Walker is running to unseat Georgia Democrat Raphael Warnock. New reporting from the "Daily Beast" has an explosive allegation against Walker, who's a hard-line, public opponent of abortion rights. It says Walker paid for a woman to have an abortion. She claims they continued to have a relationship and later had a child together. She spoke anonymously to the "Daily Beast," saying he paid for her abortion in 2009. She gave the publication what she says are receipts from the clinic, a copy from a personal check signed by Walker and a get-well card from him.
• 0:04
  Walker has denied the accusations and threatened to sue the "Daily Beast." He went on "Fox News" after the story came out…
• 0:05
  [START FOX NEWS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 0:06
  Herschel Walker: I never asked anyone to get an abortion. I never paid for an abortion. And it's a lie, and I'm gonna continue to fight. You know, I tell you that's what they want. They want this seat, but right now they've energized me even more.
• 0:07
  [END FOX NEWS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 0:08
  National Republicans have largely stood behind Walker. Trump also came to his defense. And his campaign claims half a million dollars in donations came in shortly after the story came out.
• 0:09
  Walker has faced other allegations. One of his sons is Christian Walker, who's a kind of a conservative social-media influencer. He says his father was neglectful and violent. In the past, Christian's mother, Cindy Grossman, said Herschel Walker was physically abusive and threatened to kill her. The candidate previously said he was suffering from mental illness then and didn't remember the events Grossman talked about.
• 0:10
  The latest news highlights the risk Republicans took in choosing Walker as the nominee, given past accusations and his tendency to exaggerate his business and academic records. Polls have shown him trailing Warnock for the Senate seat in a state where the GOP candidate for governor has a strong lead.
• 0:11
  [INVIGORATING MUSIC]
• 0:12
  [MUSIC FADES OUT]
• 0:13
  Hurricane lan may be gone, but it's not over for Florida. "The Washington Post" has some strong, on-the-ground reporting on what may end up being the state's deadliest hurricane since 1935. We don't have a good sense of the total death toll just yet, but so far at least 103 people have died, according to "The Post's" count of state and local reports. Most victims drowned.
• 0:14
  Yesterday, President Biden visited Florida…
• 0:15
  [START CSPAN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 0:16
  President Joe Biden: Everything. Everything. This historic, titanic and unimaginable storm just ripped it to pieces. You gotta start from scratch. You gotta move again. And it's going to take a lot, a lot of time. Not weeks or months, it's gonna take years for everything to get squared away in the state of Florida.
• 0:17
  [END CSPAN ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 0:18
  In some places, the storm surge got as high as 18 feet. Some people, many who were elderly, were trapped in their homes. It's a reminder of the greatest danger of hurricanes. High winds may get more attention as the storms approach, but disaster experts say it's often overlooked that water typically kills more people than wind.
• 0:19
  Rescue teams are still searching through the wreckage, looking for people who may be buried under rubble. "The Post" was on the ground as teams sawed through debris, looking for people. Brian Sullivan is a task force leader.
• 0:20
  [START THE WASHINGTON POST ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 0:21
  Brian Sullivan: We're kind of nearing the end of the window where we may expect to find survivors. Up to, I believe, 9-10 days there have been reports of survivors. I have not heard of any trapped survivors being found in the rubble since we've got here.
• 0:22
  [END THE WASHINGTON POST ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 0:23
  "The Post" spoke with an environmental planner who said there's a saying in the field: "You run from water and hide from wind." He underscores the need to do a better job conveying the risks to people in areas where storm surges are possible.
• 0:24
  [GENTLE MUSIC]
• 0:25
  [MUSIC FADES OUT]
• 0:26
  Anyone who's given birth knows that those first few weeks after delivery are brutal and difficult.
• 0:27
  [START GLAMOUR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 0:28
  Kailey: It is currently 3:16 in the morning. I've had some frustration with breastfeeding. Super sore and feeling defeated.
• 0:29
  [END GLAMOUR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 0:30
  [START GLAMOUR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 0:31
  Abi: I was just in so much pain. These migraines are unlike anything I've ever felt in this life.
• 0:32
  [END GLAMOUR ARCHIVAL CLIP]
• 0:33
  "Glamour" magazine collected these stories for a major project that looks at the lack of legally guaranteed paid maternity leave in America. There are so many statistics to choose from to illustrate just how challenging it is, and how out of step we are with other wealthy countries. In the U.S., one in four women go back to work within two weeks of giving birth. Often, they're still bleeding, swollen, and sleep deprived, but many can't afford not to get back to work.
• 0:34
  The United States is one of only six countries in the world without a paid leave policy. Globally, paid maternity leave averages 29 weeks. Attempts to change U.S. policy have repeatedly failed in Congress. Just last year, a proposal to fund four weeks ultimately didn't make it through.
• 0:35
  Natasha Pearlman: And I think that's outrageous, and we need to be shining a spotlight on that.
• 0:36
  That's Natasha Pearlman, the executive editor of "Glamour." She's a mom of two, and she says when she moved to the U.S., she was shocked.
• 0:37
  Pearlman: I realized just how awful it was for women to go through childbirth, or even if they didn't go through childbirth, bring up a baby for the first eight to twelve weeks and have zero financial support.
• 0:38
  "Glamour" followed eight women for 28 days after giving birth to call attention to this particularly vulnerable time.
• 0:39
  Pearlman: No one, as far as I can tell, has looked at it through the lens of women and opening up those first 28 days postpartum to show how impactful, how difficult it is, how raw and real and full of anxiety birth and post-birth is, and then throw into it the lack of financial support.
• 0:40
  One of the women you learn about is a chef named Karina.
• 0:41
  Pearlman: Six days after she gave birth, she was in her kitchen working again, and the donut bakes start at midnight, and they end at eight o'clock in the morning. So exactly at that time when she should be sleeping and resting, she was working, because they needed the money. I think it's that adrenaline of new motherhood sometimes where you think "I can do this. I can do everything." And she was really strong in those weeks because she had no other choice. But three months on, when she was looking back, she said to me "I really don't know if I can do this again if we have another child." "Can we have another child?"
• 0:42
  [AMBIENT MUSIC]
• 0:43
  [MUSIC FADES OUT]
• 0:44
  Do you have a recurring nightmare?
• 0:45
  For me, a recovering theater kid, it's backstage at the school play, and I hear my cue, but I'm not in costume, and I don't have my props, and I'm panicking. And I've often wondered, why? Like, why does my brain go there?
• 0:46
  A story from "The Atlantic" caught our attention recently. It gives some insight into anxiety dreams. Specifically, why so many of them come back to a common theme.
• 0:47
  [SCHOOL BELL RINGS]
• 0:48
  School.
• 0:49
  "The Atlantic" spoke to people who study dreams to figure out why so many adults, who haven't been in school in decades, still have nightmares about it. A Harvard dream researcher told "The Atlantic" that these kind of dreams tend to happen when we're anxious about work. Maybe it's a job interview, a big presentation. School is the place where we first got evaluated by some kind of authority figure, so our sleeping brains tend to take us back to school days when we're stressed in the office.
• 0:50
  If you're sick of your high school popping up in your sleep, a dream analyst has a recommendation for you: try imagining a new, positive ending to your anxiety dream. Do this right after you wake up, while you're still in bed. So, if your dream-self was freaking out about failing a test and not graduating, finish the story. You took the test, you did fine, you graduated, and now you're all grown up.
• 0:51
  [MUSIC FADES IN]
• 0:52
  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app now, stick around. We've got a narrated article coming up next, a "Politico" story about the reporter Maggie Haberman. Her new book about Trump is getting a lot of attention, and the story looks at the ups and downs of owning the Trump beat. So, sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back here with the news tomorrow.
• 0:53
  [MUSIC FADES OUT]