Two brutal TV takedowns show why Mark Robinson would be bad for NC | Opinion

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s victory in the Republican gubernatorial primary wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone following politics in North Carolina. But it seems like more of a surprise to everyone else, because it has garnered significant attention in the national media and late night TV.

Headlines such as “Hitler-quoting candidate wins North Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary,” “Offensive comments by N.C. Republican stand out even in Trump’s party” and “The most important governor’s race of 2024 is about to have its own version of Trump” are featured in prominent news outlets like The Washington Post and POLITICO.

Due to the increased focus on Robinson, these national outlets are also uncovering newly bizarre and troubling comments from his past, including the assertion that the Affordable Care Act “would enslave everybody” and his stated desire to go back to before the 19th Amendment was passed just so Republicans could fight for women to have the right to vote all over again.

Robinson has become such a lightning rod for nationwide scrutiny that even John Oliver talked about him on a recent episode of his show, “Last Week Tonight.” It was a pretty brutal takedown — Oliver spent 10 minutes at the outset of the show tearing into Robinson and highlighting his extreme views on everything from the LGBTQ+ community to abortion.

“Again and again, Robinson has gone out of his way to say the worst things in the most provocative way,” Oliver said.

Oliver wasn’t the only one ripping Robinson —“The Daily Show” had its own segment titled “Meet Mark Robinson: The GOP’s Next Top Lunatic.”

Great publicity for our state, right?

Clearly, it hasn’t taken long for the rest of the country to come around to what many North Carolinians have already known: Robinson says some pretty awful stuff. It’s not too hard to understand why it’s garnered so much attention — it is pretty absurd that someone who calls school shooting survivors “silly little immature media prosti-tots” and says Beyoncé’s songs “sound like Satanic chants” could be a leading candidate for governor in one of the country’s largest states.

As all of this is happening, some of Robinson’s fellow Republicans are showcasing their best mental and verbal gymnastics to defend him. Dallas Woodhouse, former executive director of the North Carolina Republican Party, recently told WUNC’s Colin Campbell that, like with Trump, people simply shouldn’t take what Robinson says literally.

“What Republicans who want to defend Mark – and what Mark’s got to do – is say, ‘you know, take me just like Trump – take me seriously, but not literally,’” Woodhouse said.

How else are we supposed to take it when Robinson calls LGBTQ+ people “filth” and suggests that women are “called to be led by men”? Just as a silly joke? Even on the off chance that Robinson is simply making an ill-advised attempt at being facetious, North Carolina deserves better than a leader who makes national headlines every 36 hours.

Senate leader Phil Berger, perhaps the most powerful Republican in North Carolina, has said that “philosophically, [Robinson is] generally in the right place.” Not exactly a confidence-inspiring endorsement.

But headlines and jokes aside, is this who we want representing us to the rest of the country and world?

No, it’s not. North Carolina is better than Mark Robinson. He is not an accurate representation of the people who live here or the kind of state that we are. We have so much more to offer than a man who provides seemingly limitless fodder for news stories and late-night jokes, but if Robinson becomes governor, it will deliver a blow to our state’s reputation that has real consequences — business, population growth and so much more.

Here’s how Oliver summed it up at the end of his show: “It is all pretty bleak, but hopefully, if the people of North Carolina do the right thing this November, the number of years this particular troll serves as governor won’t be two plus two — it’ll be (bleeping) zero.”

Let’s hope so.