Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson visits NC church, tells congregation that his political opponents ‘need killing’

Running a gubernatorial campaign can’t be easy, but when your candidate is Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, you must be on your toes and ready to defend whatever disgusting thing your boss has just said. Robinson’s team is once again lying to the media about something their boss was captured on video saying – this time, they are trying to backtrack after he told a church audience on June 30 that “some folks need killing” while seemingly referring to his political opponents.

The New Republic first reported the video and the lieutenant governor’s comments.

Considering the targets of his wrath, if you think of just about any group of people it’s highly likely that Robinson has said something horrible about them, whether that’s calling Black men “deadbeat[s]” and Black women “whorish,” calling teachers “wicked people,” or comparing the LGBTQ+ community to “what the cows leave behind,” but this time he went so far as to suggest that some people should be murdered as “a matter of necessity.”

The video of his speech at Lake Church in Bladen County shows that Robinson made the statement immediately after he mentioned the United States’ response to Nazi and Japanese attacks during World War II and right before making a reference to “wicked people” in today’s society.

Robinson said, in part: 

“We now find ourselves struggling with people who have evil intent. You know, there was a time in which we used to meet evil on the battlefield. Guess what we did to it: we killed it! … 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!”

Without making it clear who exactly he was referring to when he said that some people deserve to be killed, Robinson then referred to “wicked people doing wicked things” and suggested that the military or law enforcement should “go handle” them.

Again, Robinson didn’t specify who he was referring to, but don’t forget that he has often referred to North Carolina’s public school teachers as “wicked people.” Continuing his remarks, Robinson asked the congregation if they felt America “slipping away” as the country has started “sliding into making 1776 a distant memory” and “the tenets of socialism and communism start coming into clearer focus.”

He then suggested that leftists are targeting conservatives, which was described in The New Republic as “an ugly game widely played on the MAGA right [and] supercharged by Donald Trump.”

“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,” Robinson told the congregation.

The view that “leftists” have an outsized amount of power to target, attack and persecute conservatives is commonly expressed among the MAGA crowd as a way to justify right-wing political violence. 

MAGA followers’ attempts to justify political violence are nothing new, nor is Robinson’s habit of using churches to preach hate, but his decision to speak approvingly of murdering people as “a matter of necessity” while in a church is disturbing and disgusting new territory for him.

Josh Stein’s campaign responded to Robinson’s comments, saying they “fall into a long history of Robinson endorsing violence, including political violence” and that “We cannot have a governor who calls for extrajudicial killings. Mark Robinson is divisive and dangerous.”