Republican Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker surprised the nation with his satisfactory debate performance Friday despite the media aggressively smearing him throughout his campaign.

Following the debate, several figures in the media admitted that Walker performed better than expected. MSNBC anchor Medhi Hasan tweeted that Walker did not perform as badly “as he could have” and criticized Warnock for not going more on the offensive.

“My quick summary of the #GasenateDebate: Walker was bad but not as bad as he could have been; Warnock should have hit back way, way harder and was far too defensive throughout; the moderators were abysmal,” Hasan wrote. 

My quick summary of the #GasenateDebate: Walker was bad but not as bad as he could have been; Warnock should have hit back way, way harder and was far too defensive throughout; the moderators were abysmal.

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) October 15, 2022

Fox 5 Atlanta political commentator Phil Kent declared Walker the winner of the debate, and “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin said Monday that Walker “overperformed” against Warnock.

The media has constantly smeared Walker over the several accusations that targeted him in the past month. Media outlets obsessively covered an anonymous female source’s allegation that Walker handed her a $700 check for her to undergo an abortion in 2009, then the accusations of being a domestic abuser and absent father by his ex-wife and son, Christian.

During a segment on MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight,” MSNBC anchor Joy Reid said Walker is the “perfect black candidate” for supporters of former President Donald Trump because he will “comply” and never question the Republican agenda.

“[Walker] will comply with that agenda. Number one, because he’s never going to think through an alternative agenda and he would never defy that agenda,” Reid said. “That’s the perfect black candidate, right? Because you can say ‘I’m not racist, I’ve voted for the black candidate.’ But it’s the black guy who will never question or interrupt the drive toward the white, Christian nationalist agenda that Donald Trump believes in.”

USA Today published an opinion piece titled, “Herschel Walker embodies every negative stereotype Black Americans have fought against for decades.” The author, Njeri Mathis Rutledge, described Walker of fulfilling the negative stereotype for black Americans — dumb, violent and criminal. (RELATED: Herschel Walker Admits He Signed $700 Check Allegedly Used To Pay For Abortion)

“In a community that has fought against stereotypes of violence, criminality, intellectual inferiority and sexual promiscuity, Walker is an embarrassment,” she wrote. “Embarrassment was likely something Herschel Walker’s family was trying to escape. If his son’s statement is true, Walker was discouraged from running for office because of his sordid past. Sadly, foolish actions by Black political leaders not only bring shame on immediate family members but to an entire race.”

In September, the Savannah Morning News framed a piece on Walker’s intelligence by quoting him in the headline, “‘I’m not that smart’: Herschel Walker says ‘he’ll do his best’ in debate against Warnock.”

“I am getting out talking to people and talking to you (referring to the media),” Walker said just hours before the debate. “I’m a country boy. I’m not that smart. He’s a preacher. [Warnock] is smart and wears these nice suits. So, he is going to show up and embarrass me at the debate Oct. 14th, and I’m just waiting to show up and I will do my best.”

New York Times opinion columnist Charles Blow claimed in an April column that Walker’s stupidity is self-evident.

“Let’s just be blunt. No one, and I mean not one person, would seriously believe that Herschel Walker, the former football star and current leading contender for the Republican Senate nomination in Georgia, was at the top of his class at the University of Georgia,” Blow argued.

Starting in 2017, Walker claimed repeatedly, including on his campaign website, that he graduated from the University of Georgia (UGA) in the top one percent of his graduating class. In fact, he didn’t graduate at all. Walker’s campaign site dropped the claim shortly after the publication of a Dec. 2021 exposé in the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In May, Walker falsely claimed he had never claimed to have graduated from UGA.