Conspiracy theorist for NC Governor

Of course, I’m already on record as saying Mark Robinson is an “awful” candidate for North Carolina governor.  No sign, though, that will stop him from getting the GOP nomination.  

I enjoyed getting a call the other day from a HuffPo reporter writing about all the truly crazy conspiracies that Robinson has endorsed.  I cannot say I’m surprised at all, but… still.  Will the Republican primary electorate overlook the fact that this guy is just bonkers?  Most likely. But I will be generally quite surprised if Robinson doesn’t underperform the Republican presidential vote in NC by several points (meaning he’s very unlikely to win).  

North Carolina GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson has said it himself: He’s a conspiracy theorist.

He didn’t specify in that March interview what that means in terms of what he believes. It turns out it means he has spread virtually every conspiracy theory you can think of.

Robinson, who is the state’s lieutenant governor, has said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the 1969 moon landing was fake and the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an “inside job.” He’s “SERIOUSLY skeptical” of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. He falsely accused David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, of being a paid actor. He’s claimed that climate change is based on “junk science.”

And those are just the dangerous theories he’s echoed that have been previously reported.

In lesser-noticed social media posts, Robinson has said that news coverage of police shootings is part of a media conspiracy “designed to push US towards their new world order.” He and his wife both liked a since-deleted Facebook comment that stated, “WWG1WGA are my ‘Identity’ letters,” a reference to the QAnon rallying cry “Where we go one, we go all.” In October 2018, on a day when authorities intercepted pipe bombs intended for President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CNN, Robinson suggested on Facebook that they had done it to themselves. “If you can’t beat ’em, bomb yourself,” he wrote…

Robinson is also a regular proponent of conspiracies claiming the music industry is being run by Satan and the Illuminati. He has called Beyoncé’s music “satanic” and described Jay-Z as “demonic” and sent by Satan to turn people away from Jesus. He suggested that the 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria was orchestrated by billionaire Democratic philanthropist George Soros, a frequent target of antisemitic attacks by Republicans.

Good stuff! 

Of course, I enjoyed another opportunity to share my unvarnished opinion of Robinson:

Steven Greene, a political science professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, said Robinson simply “represents the culture war id of the Republican Party.”

“He is the Republican Party writ large,” Greene said. “One of the major themes of Trump’s campaign could be considered a conspiracy theory, which is that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Republican primary voters have shown they are very, very willing to, shall we say, be comfortable with their political leaders holding conspiracy views.”

All of the North Carolina political experts HuffPost spoke to for this story said Robinson is likely to be the GOP nominee for governor and possibly will go on to become governor, given that North Carolina is a swing state. Of the major election forecasters, the Cook Political Report rates the race as “leans Democratic,” while Inside Elections and the University of Virginia’s Crystal Ball both consider the race a tossup.

But Greene predicted that Robinson’s extremism will ultimately backfire on him, just as it did with the GOP’s gubernatorial nominee in 2020, Dan Forest.

“Dan Forest’s problem, and the reason he lost, was because he was seen as too extreme of a social conservative. Mark Robinson is Forest on steroids,” Greene said.

“We have seen ever since the elevation of Trump, Republican primary voters, again and again, time and time and time again, choosing the candidate who makes an awful general election candidate in a purple state,” he said. “My presumption is Mark Robinson will fall right into this pattern.”