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?

'The Mark Robinson Show' Gets Bad Reviews

 

So one of Mark Robinson's political advisors -- or maybe Robinson came up with this himself -- decided that a sterling opportunity had arrived for candidate Mark Robinson to not just aspire to be governor but to be the governor -- because Roy Cooper is in Japan on a business recruitment trip and the lieutenant governor is technically the "acting" governor in his absence. In that role on Wednesday Robinson solemnly announced a "special event" -- which WRAL labeled a "mystery," cause Robinson wouldn't say what it was all about -- for the following day in the NC Senate chambers (where Robinson is privileged to preside as lieutenant governor but rarely does). The special event turned out to be Robinson's stumbling over prepared remarks proclaiming "North Carolina Solidarity with Israel Week" and wordage someone else wrote for him about how North Carolina stands strongly behind the Jewish people. (Who would dare deny that Mark Robinson is a classic opportunist?) He also condemned "anti-semitism," repeating the term several times (and having trouble pronouncing it repeatedly). But that part of the special event worked against him because it sparked almost all of the questions at the subsequent press conference, questions about his past statements that have struck many as anti-semitic. (Was it just an unfortunate tic or a "tell" that he stumbled over "anti-semitism" every time he said it?) (WRAL features a 10-minute video of the entire event, including the unfortunate-for-Robinson press conference.)

Robinson said,

“But I think what we’re seeing here now is the state of North Carolina including me as one of its top leaders, we are dedicated to stamping out antisemitism wherever we find it. And we are definitely dedicated to standing with the nation of Israel as they deal with real antisemitism that has turned into murderous violence. And so our position is clear. There is no antisemitism standing here in front of you, and I can definitely say in the state of North Carolina, the majority of North Carolinians feel the same.”

I'll boil them cabbage down: Asked directly if he would now apologize for the statements he's made about Jews, particularly some Facebook posts that he now disavows (or sez he does), Robinson said, "I apologize for the wording, not the content."

Hmmmm. So instead of calling the producer of the movie "Black Panther" -- Robinson hated it -- "an agnostic Jew," the wording should have been "an agnostic" and the whole vibe is fixed, right? No one will ever be the wiser.

Dale Folwell

The response to Robinson's actorship as governor that caught my attention was the one issued by Republican-rival-for governor Dale Folwell, who minced no words and addressed Robinson directly:

I could not, in good conscience, accept your invitation as a member of the Council of State to stand with you at your press conference this morning.

You have regrettably seized the opportunity to engage in a stunt with dubious authority as acting governor during a brief interlude while Gov. Cooper is overseas conducting state business. How can you pretend to be governor when the record is clear that you haven’t done your job as lieutenant governor? As a person who has shamefully denied the Holocaust and whose history is checkered with hateful anti-Semitic comments you have no right to be commenting on this topic.... (emphasis added)

Whoa. That attack seems particularly well aimed. 

Trump's Belated Denunciation of Racism: Hypocrisy, Yes, But Also Evidence He Can Be Shoved

"Scanning the piece of paper with his finger as he read," Trump yesterday -- during a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture -- "read carefully from prepared remarks decrying bigotry and specifically condemning a wave of recent threats against Jewish centers across the country."

"Read carefully" means read haltingly, with effort, because, as we know, the man does not read. Someone made him do that and wrote out the words for him, not allowing him to free-wheel it in Trump style, because he very likely would have blurted out something that would have further exposed his stone-cold racist heart.

Last Thursday at his first press conference as president, Trump called himself the “the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life,” and, also, “the least racist person.” He was angry that a Jewish reporter had asked for a presidential statement on recent bomb threats at 48 Jewish centers across the nation (and more than 170 Jewish gravestones were found toppled at a cemetery in suburban St. Louis, over the weekend). Trump took the question personally -- wonder why? -- even though the reporter carefully prefaced that he wasn't asking nor implying anything about the president's personal views.

Trump then told the Jewish reporter to sit down and shut up, because he was just another example of the "fake news" media. Trump later claimed that his "opponents" are committing anti-Semitic acts to fuel outrage against him. "Some of the signs you’ll see are not put up by the people that love or like Donald Trump. They're put up by the other side and you think it's like playing it straight, no, but you have some of those signs and some of that anger is caused by the other side."

The other side did not cause the White House to release a statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day that did not mention the Jewish people or anti-Semitism. It was not the other side that caused Trump suddenly to not know David Duke and refuse to condemn his explicitly racist endorsement of Trump's presidential bid. It was not the other side that installed Steve Bannon next door to the Oval Office -- Steve Bannon who made his fame with the explicitly racist and explicitly anti-Semitic Breitbart News.

The racism is embedded, as is the narcissism, and what goes with narcissism? A disorienting insecurity about how one appears and a neediness for approval, so yesterday at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Trump's insecurity and neediness induced him to read a statement against racism, carefully tracing the words with his short fingers, a statement that someone else wrote for him and told him to read word-for-word, because whoever wrote the words knows that Trump in his heart has no real understanding of what those words mean.