North Carolina Lt. Gov Mark Robinson, the state’s Republican nominee for governor, went on a bizarre unhinged rant and declared that “some folks need killing” in speech at a church last week.
“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,” said Robinson, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
He continued, “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, whose speech was first reported by The New Republic, has a history of controversial remarks including in 2020 when he said he’d “absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote.”
He’s also called the 1960s civil rights movement “crap,” shared Islamophobic posts, quoted Adolf Hitler, denied the Holocaust, called for transgender women to “find a corner outside somewhere” if they need to use a public bathroom and described school shooting survivors as “spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN.”
Robinson, prior to his “killing” comment, told churchgoers at Lake Church in the small town of White Lake that people find themselves struggling with those “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,” said Robinson, who went on to refer to killing Japanese military members after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
He continued, “We didn’t argue and capitulate and talk about, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t fight the Nazis that hard.’ No, they’re bad. Kill them. Some liberal somewhere is going to say that sounds awful. Too bad. Get mad at me if you want to.”
He later declared “we need to start handling our business again” before asking the crowd, “Don’t you feel it slipping away?”
“The further we start sliding into making 1776 a distant memory and the tenets of socialism and communism start coming into clearer focus,” he said.
“They’re watching us. They’re listening to us. They’re tracking us. They get mad at you. They cancel you. They dox you. They kick you off social media. They come in and close down your business. Folks, it’s happening … because we have forgotten who we are.”
The Rev. Cameron McGill, pastor of Lake Church, told The New Republic both he and the GOP nominee predicted the “killing” comments would be “scrutinized.”
“Without a doubt, those he deemed worthy of death [were] those seeking to kill us,” wrote Cameron in an email, adding that Robinson “certainly did not imply the taking of any innocent lives” and called the rest of his remarks “non-controversial.”
Michael Lonergan, a spokesperson for Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign, told NewsNation that the GOP nominee’s comments were tied to references to the Japanese and Nazis during World War II.
Morgan Hopkins, a campaign spokesperson for Robinson’s Democratic opponent North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, said in a statement to NC Newsline that the comments “fall into a long history” of the GOP nominee “endorsing violence, including political violence.”