Source: Public Radio East
Last week, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson made another appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., and expressed one of his most shocking beliefs to date.
Robinson has repeatedly expressed his pure hatred for the LGBTQ+ community, questioned whether six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, said women can’t be leaders and compared them to Hitler and “whores,” called the Civil Rights Movement a communist plot to “subvert capitalism” and the Greensboro sit-ins a “ridiculous premise,” and blamed school shootings on “karma” for legalized abortions – so what could he have said that was even more shocking than those comments?
Believe it or not, Robinson used his CPAC speech to blame the media for mischaracterizing him, according to Public Radio East (PRE).
“Whenever they mention my name they always mention my name in conjunction with social issues and how I hate everybody,” he whined. “According to them, I hate everybody. I hate people who walk and talk and walk upright. I hate people who drive cars. I don’t hate anybody.”
He said that. He told an audience full of people that he doesn’t “hate anybody,” and presumably, he said it with full conviction – truly believing that he is somehow a victim of reporters and journalists who are just doing their jobs and quoting the exact things he has written or said over the years.
He might have at least some semblance of an argument if all of the things he’s supposedly been mischaracterized about weren’t readily available to read on his very own Facebook page, watch on the dozens of videos of his speeches, or listen to on the various podcasts on which he has appeared or in audio from speeches where he either repeated these beliefs or expressed them for the first time publicly.
It appears that we are seeing in real-time one man’s realization that when you write and say awful things so publicly and for so many years and in front of so many cameras and microphones, those things will live forever and will be thrown in your face every single time you try to pretend you never wrote or said them.
It’s a harsh realization for anyone, especially someone who already holds political office and is seeking to climb the political ladder.
Robinson is free to blame “the media” – as most Republicans do whenever they find themselves in trouble for things they’ve said or done – but until he learns to be quiet and keep his hatred to himself he will continue to have to deal with the consequences of his words and actions.
With early voting for the March 5 primary already over and his persona well established, it’s hard to imagine Robinson successfully “pivoting to the middle” or “softening” his stances. He will undoubtedly try (in his own incredibly ineffective way) to do so, but, for many reasons, it won’t work.
