by Sharelle Burt
July 5, 2024
North Carolina….make sure you know who you’re voting for!
The MAGA-supported Republican gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina, Mark Robinson, seemingly promoted political violence during a bizarre rant at a small church.
During a 30-minute speech at Lake Church in White Lake, NC, for “God and Country Sunday,” Robinson suddenly went off on an alleged tangent about a time when America met “evil on the battlefield” by killing people. “We now find ourselves struggling with people who have evil intent. You know, there’s a time when we used to meet evil on the battlefield, and guess what we did to it? We killed it!” he yelled.
“Some folks need killing! It’s time for somebody to say it. It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity! When you have wicked people doing wicked things, torturing and murdering and raping. It’s time to call out, uh, those guys in green and go have them handled. Or those boys in blue and have them go handle it.…”
Robinson then poked fun at liberal voters who he claimed “is going to say that sounds awful.” “Too bad. Get mad at me if you want to,” he continued.
Following a round of reportedly awkward applause, the lieutenant governor touched on points from the beginning of his speech regarding freedom and privacy, stating that it was “slipping away.” “The further away we get from the concept of 1776 and why we declared our independence and how we declared our independence, the further we start sliding into making 1776 a distant memory,” he said.
Social media users caught wind of the comments as the video began to go viral. One user tagged the FBI, calling for the agency to “check this sh*t out.” Another pointed out the hypocrisy in Robinson’s speech since, as a Black man in 1776, he wouldn’t be free. “Funny he mentions 1776 as if he would’ve been a free Black man at that time and also not someone who would eventually be counted as 3/5 of a person,” @franklinisbored wrote.
One user even called for the church to post the Ten Commandments on its wall, following Louisiana’s new law requiring the laws to be posted on the walls of every public school classroom.
It’s not far-fetched for the self-described “MAGA Republican” to go on rants about violence. The NC Democratic Party responded to the video on X after Robinson allegedly called public school teachers “wicked people.” “Mark Robinson called public school teachers “wicked people.” Now he’s saying wicked people “need killing” as a “matter of necessity,” the group said.
“Anyone who talks about teachers the same way he talks about terrorists is too dangerous to be North Carolina’s next governor.”
On top of calling for trans women to be arrested, in 2022, a day after a gunman killed 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., Robinson preached at a church in rural North Carolina, celebrating the fact that he owns AR-15 rifles and what he wants to use them for. “I got them AR-15s in case the government gets too big for its britches,” he said, according to WRAL.
“Because I’m going to fill the backside of those britches with some lead. I’m going to say it to you plain: your boy ain’t going down without swinging.”
The pastor of Lake Church, Rev. Cameron McGill, knew that Robinson would mention killing in his speech. He told the New Republic he and the candidate expected the backlash but defended the stance as he wasn’t talking about taking innocent lives. “Without a doubt, those he deemed worthy of death were those seeking to kill us,” McGill said.
He protected the lieutenant governor by saying he “certainly did not imply the taking of any innocent lives” and that the rest of his speech was “non-controversial.”
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