Mark Robinson’s Rise And Catastrophic Fall

Most people had never heard of Mark Robinson until 2018, when a video of him defending gun rights in a Greensboro City Council meeting went viral. That flash of fame led him to drop out of college (he graduated later), quit his job in furniture manufacturing and focus on public speaking engagements.

By 2019, he was running for lieutenant governor. He won. And just four years later, he’s hoping to keep going and become North Carolina’s next Republican governor in November.

Now, though — it’s not going great.

Robinson’s ascent in politics has been remarkable, even if it’s almost entirely due to this far-right conspiracy theorist riding on the coattails of former President Donald Trump. But he was also destined to crash, which is what’s happening now. His years of publicly making sexist, racist, Islamophobic, anti-LGBTQ+ and otherwise vile comments finally caught up to him. It’s one thing to fly below the radar as a lieutenant governor, but you can’t escape scrutiny as a gubernatorial candidate, particularly in a swing state like North Carolina in a presidential election year.

A CNN report last week uncovered years of disturbing comments that Robinson apparently made on a porn site forum. He referred to himself as a “Black Nazi.” He described being sexually aroused by secretly spying on girls in showers. He called himself a “perv” who enjoys pornography featuring transgender people ― a sharp contrast to his present-day transphobic rhetoric.

Robinson has denied the report is true. He’s even vowing to sue CNN. But he has yet to show how this story, which was meticulously reported and came with receipts, is “false lies,” as he’s claimed. The fallout since its publication has been brutal: His top campaign staff resigned en masse, GOP groups pulled ad money for his campaign and Republican politicians, once eager to support him, now want nothing to do with him.

Even Trump, who enthusiastically endorsed Robinson in March and has hailed him as “Martin Luther King on steroids,” is avoiding being seen with him.

The CNN report is a doozy, but it is not by any means the first sign that Robinson has said things that are unacceptable — that should be unacceptable — for a statewide elected official.

While the CNN report may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back for many of his supporters, what’s more surprising is how many straws came before it, without derailing his rise.

He’s demeaned powerful women (saying Michelle Obama emanates “the stench of human waste” and Nancy Pelosi is akin to Adolf Hitler). He’s pushed conspiracy theories. (He “wouldn’t be surprised” if the 1969 moon landing was fake and the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an “inside job.”) He’s spread Islamophobia for years. (“Someone should open an Islamic theme park,” he said on Facebook. “That would be a blast.”) He’s repeatedly condemned birth control and abortion, at one point waving his hand by his groin and telling women to “get this under control.”

He’s also made alarming comments about weighty political issues, like contraception and transgender rights, that beyond offensiveness, offer hints of how his apparently conspiratorial thinking would play out in a Robinson-led North Carolina.

For example, as governor, he could do more than just make strange complaints that birth control is “being forced on very young ladies” even as conservative-led states are making it more difficult to access it, something that’s been happening since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade 2022. And then there’s Robinson’s vow to arrest transgender women for using women’s bathrooms, part of the ongoing right-wing crusade to push trans and gender-nonconforming people out of public life.

And the North Carolina Republican has made so many other inflammatory comments that haven’t even been fully reported on, but that are still out there on social media.

Consider his still-public posts attacking Black communities. Robinson, who is Black, has said on Facebook that African Americans “wallow in victimhood like hogs in slop.”

He’s described African American culture as a “GODLESS, man hating, baby killing, ‘bastard breeding,’ violent, lawless culture.”

He’s said he doesn’t consider himself part of the African American community because this community “murders its children” and “sucks from the putrid tit of the government and then complains about getting sour milk.”

A spokesperson for Robinson’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on whether he stands by his past comments about Black people.

Between now and Election Day, there will almost certainly be more stories uncovering more offensive things that Robinson has said. But we now have the clearest sign yet that the damage has been done to Robinson’s chances as governor: Trump has ditched his own star prodigy.