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President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday he would nominate Heisman Trophy winner and former NFL player Herschel Walker to serve as his ambassador to the Bahamas.
A member of the College Football Hall of Fame, Walker won the Heisman at Georgia. He played in the NFL from 1986 to 1997 and competed in the bobsled for Team USA at the 1992 Winter Olympics.
Between college and the NFL, Walker was first drafted in 1983 to the New Jersey Generals, a team in the United States Football League owned by Trump. The two have had a long friendship that includes a family trip to Disney World and an appearance by Walker on an early season of The Celebrity Apprentice.
Trump tapped Walker for his Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. Walker served on the group from 2018 to 2022, and co-chaired it from 2019 to 2020. The former player spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention in support of his friend.
Ahead of the 2022 Georgia Senate election, Trump encouraged Walker to run against the incumbent, Raphael Warnock. The vote went to a run-off, but Warnock won reelection. The 2022 race was marked by a series of scandals for Walker, including several of his former partners accusing him of domestic violence.
Walker spoke at a rally for Trump in Macon, Ga. in November. At that same rally, Trump said he wanted to build a missile defense shield similar to Israel’s Iron Dome. He said “a lot of” the system would be constructed in Georgia and he would “put Herschel Walker in charge of that little sucker.”
The U.S. has not had an official ambassador in the Bahamas since 2011. Presidents have nominated several in the past, but each of their confirmation processes have struggled in the Senate, either stalling or failing to pass a vote. Doug Manchester, a billionaire put forward by Trump, was tied to a possible pay-for-play scheme to move his nomination forward in 2019, and was never put up to a Senate vote.
The de-facto ambassadors have been called chargé d’affaires, which is the term for a diplomat serving in lieu of an ambassador.
“I’m happy to do the job until we get an ambassador, but nobody understands my title, chargé d’affaires; nobody wants that. They want an ambassador. So, I think it is symbolic more than anything else. Occasionally, it does matter,” Usha Pitts, who held the position from January 2021 to April 2024, said last year.
Walker is one of a number of figures with sports ties whom Trump has already chosen to join his administration. WWE cofounder and former CEO Linda McMahon is Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Education, and former NFL player Scott Turner is the choice to helm the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Former Atlanta Dream owner Kelly Loeffler has also been tapped to run the Small Business Administration.
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