Maybe Mark Robinson Is Just a Big Dope

Mark Robinson's blowhard and ill-considered proclamations keep reappearing out of the not-at-all-distant past, like the clip below from 2018. (It's an interview from "The King's Report," a podcast of peculiar origin, which may also rank on whatever scale you personally maintain for Most Bizarre Host of a podcast. "The King's Report" is hosted by Rev. Hyung Jin "Sean" Moon, the son and successor to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. In the podcast, Sean Moon is wearing camo and a crown fashioned from high-caliber bullets. King of the world indeed.) 

It's an hour-long podcast meant to showcase and celebrate the grassroots fightin' genius of Mark Robinson, private citizen at the time, whose recent bravura speech before the Greensboro City Council protesting any restrictions on gun shows had gone completely viral in conservative circles. Robinson was and is an amazingly effective and fluid speaker. When he's in his groove and feels particularly self-righteous, he does not stumble nor hesitate. He's a natural-born preacher, really, and his text is always the unjust shenanigans of pussy liberals who threaten the freedom of born-again Christians. With the volume of his voice and the certitude of his pronouncements, Robinson symbolizes and embodies the fighting spirit that made Donald Trump such an avatar. Robinson, recall, was rising to speak at the hearing in Greensboro during the first two years of the Trump presidency, when pugnacious truculence was becoming the prevailing style. 

The independent news-gathering blog "Charlotte Stories" was the first to unearth a pretty remarkable performance by Robinson soon after his star-turn in front of the Greensboro City Council. Robinson went on Rev. Sean Moon's podcast as an enthusiastic amen-er for that militant version of Christianity, which doesn't emphasize so much the loving arms of Jesus as the iron scourge of right-wing purity. According to Moon, most government (at least all of it not run by Donald Trump) and "the elites" are nothing more than tools of Satan who must be confronted by armed resistance if necessary (which explains the crown of bullets, the camo, and the high-capacity assault rifle sitting prominently on top of Moon's desk). When Moon runs out of breath for his bursts of resentment against the godless elites, Robinson throws in his own Gospel that "leftists hi-jacked liberalism," that they have been leading the blind into greater dependency on government, which means greater power for Democratic politicians. Moon applauds all of that but has his own fish to fry. It's not until the 50:37 mark on the podcast that Moon gets around to the evil of "banks" and "bankers," "Soros and the Rothschild group," appearing to make this very logical connection: that Hitler had to do genocide of the Jews to "pay back" the Jewish bankers:

“When Hitler genocided all those folks -- the Jews and the gypsies, etc., -- in Germany, the national debt of Germany actually went down. It didn’t go up. It went down. He was paying back the bankers.”

To which bizarre enunciation of anti-Semitism Mark Robinson only mumbled, “mmhmm, mmhmm, yeah.” 

Burning Question Number One: Why would Robinson go on this podcast with this particular influencer? I mean, why? Because he had only just begun to be famous, and he was clearly infatuated by all the praise Moon heaped on him as a fighter for guns and godliness. After the Greensboro speech -- which incidentally Moon includes in its entirety at the beginning of this podcast (if you've never seen it), Robinson was enamored of his own sudden notoriety, eager for more media hype, and he didn't mind the reputation of whoever would give him air. Now that he's a successful politician running for higher office and clearly being coached to rein it in, I doubt he'd go on the "King's Report."

Burning Question Number Two: Charlotte Stories wanted to use Robinson's reaction to Moon's anti-Semitism as proof of Robinson's anti-Semitism. I think Robinson's mmmhmm, mmhmm, yeah was probably more indicative of "I haven't got a clue what you just said." That moment, not to mention the whole hour-long production, just screams dumb chump. Had Robinson done any research on Moon and his movement? Dunno. Maybe he didn't care. Maybe he only focused on going off as he likes to go off, in that blustering, preachy style of his, and Sean Moon was clearly dee-lighted with the Black man going after the white socialist elites. Was Mark Robinson so ambitious for more notoriety that he'd jump on a crazy train? Or did he really agree with all those Moon pronouncements?