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The Republican Freak Show
Like the man who leads it, the GOP is not just incidentally grotesque. It is grotesque at its core.
The Republican Freak Show
Like the man who leads it, the GOP is not just incidentally grotesque. It is grotesque at its core.
www.theatlantic.com
The GOP is a moral freak show, and freak shows attract freaks. Which is why Mark Robinson fits in so well in today’s Republican Party.
Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, has described himself as a “devout Christian.” But a recent CNN story reported that several years ago, he was a porn-site user who enjoyed watching transgender pornography (despite a history of an anti-transgender rhetoric), referred to himself as a “Black Nazi,” and supported the return of slavery. According to CNN, commenters on the website discussed whether to believe the story of a woman who said she was raped by her taxi driver while intoxicated. Robinson wrote in response, “And the moral of this story….. Don’t f**k a white b*tch!” Politico reports that Robinson’s email address was also registered on Ashley Madison, a website for married people seeking affairs. (Robinson, the current lieutenant governor of North Carolina, has denied all of the claims.)
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These allegations aren’t entirely shocking, because Robinson—a self-described “MAGA Republican”—has shown signs in the past of being a deeply troubled person. (My Atlantic colleague David Graham wrote a superb profile of Robinson in May.)
David A. Graham: Mark Robinson is testing the bounds of GOP extremism
Regarding the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, in 2011, Robinson wrote, “Get that fucking commie bastard off the National Mall!” Robinson also has referred to the slain civil-rights champion as “worse than a maggot,” a “ho fucking, phony,” and a “huckster.” During the Obama presidency, Robinson wrote, “I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now!” He promoted the conspiracy theory claiming that Obama was born in Kenya. He referred to Michelle Obama as a man and Hillary Clinton as a “heifer.” He compared Nancy Pelosi to Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and Castro and mocked the near-fatal assault on her husband, Paul Pelosi. He is also an election denier, claiming that Joe Biden “stole the election.”
In 2017, Robinson wrote, “There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered.” He has used demeaning language against Jews and gay people. He has cruelly mocked school-shooting survivors (“media prosti-tots”). And he supported a total ban on abortion, without exceptions for rape or incest, even though he admitted that he’d paid for an abortion in the past.