Swing States 2024
Politics

Republican NC governor candidate Mark Robinson fires back after outrage over ‘some folks need killing’ comment

The Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina fired back Friday after the Biden-Harris campaign called him a “MAGA extremist” for telling an audience at a North Carolina church last weekend that “some folks need killing.”

“In the latest example of the company Donald Trump keeps,” the Democratic campaign said in a statement, “North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who Donald Trump endorsed, campaigned alongside, and called ‘Martin Luther King on steroids,’ openly endorsed political violence in a newly released video.”

“It’s just the latest example of Donald Trump’s MAGA extremists taking cues from Trump himself,” the statement concluded.

 North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson
The Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina fired back Friday after the Biden-Harris campaign called him a “MAGA extremist. Getty Images

Robinson campaign spokesman Mike Lonergan responded to a request for comment by saying the quote from the lieutenant governor’s remarks at Lake Church in White Lake, NC had been “cherry-picked.”

“He’s speaking about the enemies of the US and the Allied Powers during World War II, the Nazis, and the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy,” Lonergan told The Post in a statement before including the full quote.

“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,” Robinson said. “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. 

"In the latest example of the company Donald Trump keeps," the Democratic campaign said in a statement, "North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who Donald Trump endorsed
“In the latest example of the company Donald Trump keeps,” the Democratic campaign said in a statement, “North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who Donald Trump endorsed. Megan Smith/USA TODAY Network / USA TODAY NETWORK

“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,” Robinson concluded. “Too bad. Get mad at me if you want to. Some folks need killing.”

Robinson is facing Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein in the general election and polls indicate a tight race, with Stein holding a narrow 0.2-percentage-point edge, according to RealClearPolitics.

The Republican came under fire earlier this year for comments he made stating that “I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote.

“Do you wanna know why?” Robinson asked an assembly of Republican women. “Because in those days we had people who fought for real social change. And they were called Republicans. And they are the reason why women can vote today.”

“That’s the America we want to bring back,” he said. “We want to bring back the America where Republicans and principles and true ideas of freedom rule.”