Robinson’s Remarks About “Some Folks Need Killing”

By Cash Michaels –

Recent controversial remarks from NC Lt. Governor and Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson that “Some folks need killing” are not only drawing renewed attention to his penchant for uttering divisive statements but are the latest example of violence-tinged remarks coming from North Carolina conservative candidates running for the state’s highest offices.

In the immediate aftermath of the US Supreme Court’s recent historic decision granting presidents and former presidents “absolute immunity” for their official acts, talk of political violence from former President Donald Trump if he wins the 2024 election is increasingly alarming political observers given the legacy of the January 6, 2021, siege on the US Capitol.

Candidates like Robinson who openly support Trump’s reelection help create an atmosphere where such talk is tolerated, observers say. Robinson joins Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee for Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Dan Bishop, GOP candidate for state Attorney General,  in going on the record with talk about political violence.

As a videotape and published reports show, Robinson was addressing a conservative church in White Lake in Bladen County for its “God and Country Day” on Sunday June 30 of this year. At one point during his address to the predominately white congregants, the Lt. Governor said:

“We now find ourselves struggling with people who have evil intent. You know there was a time when we used to meet evil on the battlefield and guess what we did to it? We killed it. We didn’t quibble about it, we didn’t argue about it, we didn’t fight about it, we killed it! When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we flew to Japan, and we killed the Japanese Army and Navy. We didn’t even quibble about it. ‘I didn’t start this fight, you did! You wanna be left alone, you shoulda left me alone.’ 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 gonna say that’s awful. Too bad! Get mad at me if you want to. Some folks need killing.”

State Rep. Deb Butler (D-New Hanover) reacted to a tape of Robinson’s remarks on X (formerly Twitter) by saying, “This rhetoric must be denounced by each and every leader in the NCGOP. Advocating for people to be killed. If that’s your brand of Christianity, Mister Robinson, you can keep it.”

A spokesperson for Robinson’s campaign replied that “He was talking about America fighting the Axis Powers in WWII; your lies are despicable and a great example of why the voters have put the Democrat Party on the back bench in NC.”

The problem with that explanation is that Robinson began his remarks by saying, “We now find ourselves struggling with people who have evil intent. You know there was a time when we used to meet evil on the battlefield and guess what we did to it? We killed it.”

The World War II analogies then immediately followed.

Though she has mostly stayed out of the limelight since her surprise victory in the GOP primary for state Supt. of Public Instruction, MAGA candidate Michele Morrow is still trying to shake the stigma of previously posting on social media that certain Democrats should be killed.

“[Morrow has] called for a pay-per-view execution of former President Barack Obama, whom she considers a war criminal,” WRAL-TV reported last March. “She also called for the executions of other prominent Democratic politicians and Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his ex-wife Melinda.”

Morrow’s Democratic opponent for state Supt. of Public Instruction, former Guilford County Schools Supt. Mo Green, blasted her social media remarks, saying, “We should not tolerate this,” and that her posts reveal Morrow’s “…much darker view of the world…fueled by violence.”

The third MAGA conservative candidate running for top office in North Carolina is Rep. Dan Bishop (R-Union). When Bishop served in the state House, he was infamously known as the primary sponsor of 2016’s HB 2, “the bathroom bill,” which denied transgender people the right to use the public restroom facilities of their choice. The bill, which became law when former NC Gov. Pat McCrory signed it, cost North Carolina hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business revenue and job opportunities as a result. The Republican-led legislature was later forced to rescind the measure.

Now a conservative congressman running for state Attorney General, Bishop issued a statement decrying former Pres. Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up his having bribed a porn star with $130,000 to remain quiet about their alleged affair prior to the 2016 presidential election.

“Today’s verdict is a travesty for America. This was a rigged trial designed for one outcome: to ‘Get Trump.’ Leftists would rather shred the Constitution and destroy the rule of law than face Trump in a fair fight. Americans see through the farce,” Rep. Bishop said in a statement afterwards. “Lawfare has reached its Waterloo. A reckoning is coming for gangster government.”

[The 1815 Bettle of Waterloo, fought near what is now known as Belgium, marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars but is considered to be one of the bloodiest battles of those wars.]

Former Pres. Trump is also noted for employing violent language during his run for re-election, saying recently that there will be a ‘bloodbath” if he loses, and that if he wins, he may seek “retribution,” though he later tried to soften that by saying “success” at winning would be his retribution.

Some observers call what Trump and his MAGA followers are doing is practicing “the politics of fear.”

Many of Trump’s supporters called his NY felony conviction “an act of war.”

In a recent story on current politically violent talk, The NY Times reported that we should expect to hear more of it in the coming months, and that it, again, creates a dangerous atmosphere in the nation.

“So far, the politicians who have used this rhetoric to inspire people to violence have not been held accountable,” Mary McCord, a former senior Justice Department official who has studied the ties between extremist rhetoric and violence, told The Times. “Until that happens, there’s little deterrent to using this type of language.”