There is a certain type of person who makes a living by making people angry online. They are commonly known as “trolls” and are people who do provocative things to upset internet users who come across their posts.
Donald Trump proved in 2016 that trolling could win him an election, and now he’s proven it can help him secure the nomination for a second time.
In my home state of North Carolina, there are two trolls on the ballot this year: Trump, who you’ve heard of, and another who hopes to one day be just as famous.
There has been a lot of coverage recently about North Carolina’s Republican Lt. Governor, Mark Robinson. Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported on Facebook posts by Robinson defending abusers like Harvey Weinstein.
“Harvey Weinstein and the rest of Hollywood’s A-list elite were simply sacrificed,” Robinson wrote on Facebook in 2017, after dozens of women came forward with their stories of sexual abuse by Weinstein. “They were slaughtered to pollute the airwaves with stories of how pervasive a culture of ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘toxic masculinity’ is in America.”
I’ve followed Robinson’s rise for years, and this isn’t the first time a gubernatorial candidate has made headlines for an outlandish statement, and it doesn’t seem to be affecting his political career.
Mark Robinson’s most offensive comments
In 2021, he attracted statewide attention for calling gay and transgender people “filth,” and a year later, despite being staunchly pro-life as a politician, he faced scrutiny for 2012 Facebook comments in which he acknowledged paying for an abortion in 1989. His Facebook posts were so controversial that at one point they could have made up a weekly column.
Despite the negative attention from the press, Robinson still has a chance of becoming North Carolina’s governor in November. Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said he thinks the chances are about 50/50.
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“He’s been good at getting his name out there and winning the primary. In North Carolina, his chances of winning the general election are about the flip of a coin,” Cooper told me.
With Robinson, North Carolina has produced another MAGA politician whose rhetoric will in no way hurt his chances of winning the election.
rapidly rise to fame as a politician
When a video of Robinson speaking at a Greensboro City Council meeting was shared by then-U.S. Representative Mark Walker in 2018, Robinson seemed like just a regular guy.
The video garnered millions of views on Facebook and landed Robinson an appearance on “Fox & Friends.” In 2020, she ran for lieutenant governor of North Carolina, a position that brings high name recognition but little power. Though she had never held public office, she defeated Democratic candidate Yvonne Lewis Holley to take office in 2021.
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Since then, Robinson has become something of a right-wing celebrity. He’s spoken at the National Rifle Association convention and the Conservative Political Action Conference and made multiple appearances on Fox News. He has more than 175,000 followers on Facebook and 114,500 on Twitter. New York magazine recently called him “MAGA’s Great Black Hope” in a headline.
Robinson is modeled after Trump’s MAGA image — including scare tactics
In some ways, Robinson’s rise to power is similar to that of Trump’s. Like Trump and other MAGA Republicans, Robinson is a force in the culture wars. Despite his modest power as lieutenant governor, Robinson’s influence extends beyond his online persona. In 2021, Robinson created a task force to crack down on teachers who “indoctrinate” students, at a time when the school board was in the midst of a debate about “critical race theory.”
Despite promises of evidence and 506 submissions to the task force in the first six weeks, there has been little evidence that teachers are actually corrupting the state’s youth. For MAGA politicians, the end result doesn’t matter. The goal is to create as much noise as possible about a social issue, galvanize their supporters, and create a fake crusade against anything that is deemed “woke.” Without evidence, they will never admit wrong; they just move on to the next boogeyman.
Despite the scare tactics, it’s clear that Robinson reflects a slice of state politics: In the last year alone, the state has rolled back abortion access by enacting a 12-week abortion ban and demonized transgender people through a series of anti-LGBTQ bills.
But he has also made statements that give even Republicans pause: While taking office as governor in October 2023, he declared that the state would support Israel in its war against Hamas, which led to public outcry over anti-Semitic comments he has made in the past, including a Facebook post in which he flatly denied that the Holocaust ever happened.
The right doesn’t seem to care about the awful things Robinson said, and if they do, they aren’t vocal enough about it.
“Would things be better if he hadn’t done something so outlandish?” Cooper asks. “Maybe, just a little bit. But no amount of rhetoric can defeat a Republican or a Democrat for a state seat in North Carolina. It’s a close race, and crossover voting is so rare.”
It’s unfortunate that despite all the nasty things Robinson has said over the years, nothing seems to have done anything to lessen his chances of winning governor.
It’s also not surprising. MAGA Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Trump himself, no matter how much we try to convince them they can’t win, have been able to rise above conspiracy theories and social media posts to become legitimate threats to democracy, just like people treated Trump in 2016, and we saw what happened there. North Carolina will find out the truth after November.
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Sara Pequeno on X. Formerly on Twitter, @sara__pequeno and on Facebook at facebook.com/PequenoWrites
