It’s Don­ald Trump’s Repub­li­can Par­ty. That’s long been obvi­ous. But with Nik­ki Haley drop­ping out of the Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry fol­low­ing the ‘Super Tues­day’ pri­maries, the cult of Trump is offi­cial.

But Haley drop­ping out was­n’t the only sign of the par­ty’s embrace of the cult of Trump. North Car­oli­na’s Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry sealed the deal for the ris­ing star in the state GOP: Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Mark Robin­son. Yes, the same Mark Robin­son whose polit­i­cal rise appears to be inter­twined with his open embrace of QAnon-style pol­i­tics and who called for an end to the taboo on quot­ing Hitler at the 2023 Moms for Lib­er­ty Sum­mit. That’s the guy who won the pri­ma­ry, thanks, in part, to an endorse­ment from Trump.

So with North Car­oli­na’s GOP set­ting Robin­son up as stan­dard bear­er for the state’s Repub­li­can Par­ty as the age of Trump con­tin­ue to shape the par­ty, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that cult dynam­ics is like Coke Clas­sic for the GOP. The par­ty might have a new cult leader, but an open embrace of cults is noth­ing new. Just take the GOP’s decades-long long-stand­ing alliance with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. An alliance that’s demon­stra­bly still going strong in the MAGA era. Recall how Trump spent the 20th anniver­sary of the 9/11 attacks giv­ing the keynote address at the “Ral­ly of Hope Think Tank” event orga­nized by Hak Ja Han Moon, wid­ow of Uni­fi­ca­tion Church founder Sun Myung Moon. Newt Gin­grich also appeared on video at the event. This was all fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar event months ear­li­er that includ­ed appear­ances by both Mike Pom­peo and Mike Pence.

And as we’re going to see, that GOP-Uni­fi­ca­tion Church is an alliance Mark Robin­son is well aware of since he’s in the alliance him­self. Or at least is extreme­ly Uni­fi­ca­tion Church-friend­ly. That’s what we can rea­son­ably infer from Robin­son’s 2019 appear­ance on Rod of Iron Min­istries pod­cast. Recall how the Rod of Iron Min­istries is the Penn­syl­va­nia-based church, found­ed by Rev­erend Moon’s son, Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, which does­n’t just ped­dle “Satan­ic pedophile elite com­mu­nists rule the world” nar­ra­tives, but also wor­ships AR-15 rifles as some sort of divine weapon. Moon is, as we should expect, extreme­ly pro-MAGA and was at the Capi­tol along with a group of fol­low­ers on Jan­u­ary 6.

The inter­view with Robin­son goes on for near­ly hour, with Moon repeat­ed­ly express­ing his QAnon-ish world­view and Robin­son chim­ing in with com­plete agree­ment. For exam­ple, at 19 min­utes, Moon talks about how fig­ures like Hillary Clin­ton and George Soros become lit­er­al Satanists who are above the law. At 50 min­utes, Moon explains Hitler’s ratio­nale for the Holo­caust as pay­ing down Ger­many’s debt to pay back ‘the bankers’.

So while the nom­i­na­tion of Robin­son is appro­pri­ate­ly being report­ed on as a reflec­tion of the ascen­dan­cy of the Cult of Trump as the defin­ing ele­ment of today’s Repub­li­can par­ty, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s adven­tures with cults isn’t a recent phe­nom­e­na. There may be a new cult leader, but the same old cyn­i­cal wor­ship of pow­er at any cost:

Politi­co

The most impor­tant governor’s race of 2024 is about to have its own ver­sion of Trump

Repub­li­cans are poised to nom­i­nate Lt. Gov. Mark Robin­son — a can­di­date mold­ed in Don­ald Trump’s image.
Mark Robin­son speaks on stage.

By Zach Mon­tel­laro
03/05/2024 05:00 AM EST

For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump paved the way for Mark Robin­son.

Robin­son, a can­di­date in North Carolina’s GOP pri­ma­ry for gov­er­nor Tues­day, has done all the things that would nor­mal­ly make some­one a tox­ic gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date: He’s called homo­sex­u­al­i­ty “filth,” made anti­se­mit­ic remarks about Hol­ly­wood con­trol­ling Black peo­ple and expressed ret­ro­grade views about women.

And he’s set to glide to the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion — and poten­tial­ly lock Democ­rats out of state gov­ern­ment in one of the country’s biggest swing states.

Robinson’s like­ly vic­to­ry on Tues­day is the lat­est in his near­ly unar­rest­ed polit­i­cal rise — from a fur­ni­ture man­u­fac­tur­er who gave a viral speech in defense of gun rights at a city coun­cil meet­ing in 2018, to being elect­ed lieu­tenant gov­er­nor just over two years lat­er.

Secur­ing the nom­i­na­tion will set him on a col­li­sion course with state Attor­ney Gen­er­al Josh Stein, the like­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee, for the most impor­tant — and almost assured­ly most expen­sive — governor’s race of the year. Recent polling has Robin­son and Stein effec­tive­ly tied in a hypo­thet­i­cal gen­er­al elec­tion match-up. Should Robin­son win in Novem­ber, it would bring all three branch­es of North Carolina’s gov­ern­ment under con­trol of Repub­li­cans in a state that was once seen as Democ­rats’ future foothold in the South.

And it comes as both Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Trump sig­nal they’ll heav­i­ly tar­get the state, which had the clos­est mar­gin for any state Trump won in 2020.

Robin­son is a bom­bas­tic and engag­ing ora­tor who has often drawn com­par­isons to Trump — for their rapid ris­es in pol­i­tics, the devo­tion they com­mand from the GOP base and the laun­dry lists of scan­dals that have trailed both men. Robinson’s pub­lic con­tro­ver­sies range from agree­ing with anti­se­mit­ic remarks about the glob­al econ­o­my to com­par­ing women who get abor­tions to mur­der­ers.

Democ­rats are prac­ti­cal­ly beg­ging for the chance to raise that his­to­ry dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion, hop­ing it will sink Robin­son. But Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers appear entire­ly unin­ter­est­ed in lit­i­gat­ing it.

Robin­son has faced a hand­ful of promi­nent oppo­nents for the GOP nod. State Trea­sur­er Dale Fol­well entered the race first, but has been unable to muster the resources to be com­pet­i­tive. For­mer Rep. Mark Walk­er was in the race for a bit before drop­ping out to try to win back a spot in Con­gress. But the most notable can­di­date is Bill Gra­ham, a self-fund­ing attor­ney who has poured mil­lions into his cam­paign and has the back­ing of the state’s senior sen­a­tor, Thom Tillis.

All three raised the same basic argu­ment against Robin­son: elec­tabil­i­ty. Robinson’s con­tro­ver­sies, they said, would serve as a weight in Novem­ber and squan­der the party’s shot at com­plete con­trol.

“He’s going to have a lot of trou­ble,” Tillis said in a brief inter­view with POLITICO. He said his crit­i­cism wasn’t per­son­al, but “you can assume that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion is going to use every page of what­ev­er oppo­si­tion research they’ll have against the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor.”

Graham’s cam­paign poured near­ly $5.5 mil­lion into adver­tis­ing — the only sig­nif­i­cant adver­tis­ing in the race from either par­ty so far — with near­ly $1.2 mil­lion of that spent on neg­a­tive ads wail­ing on Robin­son, accord­ing to track­ing from AdIm­pact.

“Mark Robin­son? He sug­gest­ed the Holo­caust wasn’t real. Down­played the Nazis. Pro­mot­ed Hitler pro­pa­gan­da,” Gra­ham says in one of his ads, ref­er­enc­ing a report from Jew­ish Insid­er last year unearthing old social media posts. Anoth­er ad high­lights com­ments Robin­son made at a church that Chris­tians are “called to be led by men,” not women.

Robin­son has called his social media posts “poor­ly word­ed” but said that there “is no anti­semitism stand­ing here” and that he believes women can be lead­ers. He and his allies have dis­missed the elec­tabil­i­ty argu­ment, say­ing his crit­ics just don’t under­stand the mod­ern GOP.

“If you were craft­ing a script and try­ing to design a char­ac­ter that would be the per­fect char­ac­ter for the moment where pol­i­tics are in 2024, you’d be hard pressed to find much dif­fer­ent than what you have with Mark Robin­son,” said Jonathan Felts, a long­time GOP oper­a­tive who is help­ing lead a pro-Robin­son super PAC.

Robinson’s intra­party crit­ics, he said, “are the peo­ple who are pas­sion­ate­ly long­ing for the good old days when the Repub­li­can Par­ty was the Cham­ber of Com­merce par­ty.”

The major­i­ty of Repub­li­can vot­ers appear to side with Robin­son. A poll from East Car­oli­na Uni­ver­si­ty from the mid­dle of Feb­ru­ary found Robin­son at 53 per­cent in the pri­ma­ry, com­pared to 13 per­cent for Gra­ham and 7 per­cent for Fal­well.

“Some of these ads that attack Mark look very sim­i­lar and are very sim­i­lar to what the Democ­rats are going to run on,” said Dal­las Wood­house, the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the state GOP. “That might just not work very well in a Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry.”

The state’s GOP polit­i­cal elite, with the excep­tion of Tillis, also haven’t got­ten in Robinson’s way. Some promi­nent Repub­li­cans — includ­ing Sen. Ted Budd and state Sen­ate Repub­li­can leader Phil Berg­er — endorsed his cam­paign, and most oth­ers sat on the side­lines.

Trump him­self looms over the pri­ma­ry as well. After heap­ing praise on Robin­son for months, Trump for­mal­ly endorsed him at a ral­ly in the state on Sat­ur­day, call­ing him “Mar­tin Luther King on steroids.”

As his path to the nom­i­na­tion has cleared, Robin­son has at times appeared to try mov­ing away from the social issues that will be fod­der for attack ads. He opened his speech to CPAC last month by talk­ing about North Carolina’s bud­get sur­plus (which he cred­it­ed to Repub­li­cans).

But Demo­c­ra­t­ic attacks against him will be inescapable, and Robin­son knows he’ll be the sub­ject of media scruti­ny.

“I can give a 25-minute speech, 24 min­utes will be about what I just told you,” he said to the CPAC crowd. “I can men­tion 30 sec­onds about why men shouldn’t be com­pet­ing in women’s sports, and men ought to go in their own bath­room and not the women’s bath­room, and when the left­ist news media reports the next day, guess what the arti­cle is about?”

...

Both par­ties expect the Novem­ber elec­tion, pre­sum­ably between Robin­son and Stein, to be incred­i­bly com­pet­i­tive. At POLITICO’s Gov­er­nors Sum­mit last month, Repub­li­can Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion Chair Bill Lee called the state “a big oppor­tu­ni­ty” for the GOP, adding that it will be the committee’s focus this year, along­side New Hamp­shire. And Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion Chair Tim Walz said at a reporter round­table the next day that the par­ty would mar­shall ”unpar­al­leled” resources to defend the seat.

The ECU poll of a hypo­thet­i­cal gen­er­al elec­tion matchup had each can­di­date at 41 per­cent.

Democ­rats believe Robin­son close­ly mir­rors some of the guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­dates — like Arizona’s Kari Lake or Pennsylvania’s Doug Mas­tri­ano — who lost in swing states in 2022.

“I’d like to think it is because we were so spec­tac­u­lar and beloved, but some of it has to do with that they have hor­ri­ble can­di­dates who are extrem­ists and fall into that cat­e­go­ry,” said Walz. “And they’re doing it again.”

Stein enters the gen­er­al elec­tion with a slight advan­tage, accord­ing to those involved in the race, and not just because he has raised far more mon­ey than Robin­son. The state has a long his­to­ry of elect­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nors — the par­ty has won sev­en of the last eight guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tions, even as the GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee car­ried the state by the same ratio. Coop­er, the out­go­ing gov­er­nor, car­ried the state in 2016 and 2020 even while Trump also won the state.

“Stein is the favorite because … we elect Repub­li­can pres­i­dents and Democrat[ic] gov­er­nors, and have for decades,” said Wood­house, the for­mer GOP exec­u­tive direc­tor.

But how close the pres­i­den­tial con­test is this year could be a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor, he said: “Josh Stein is prob­a­bly gov­er­nor if Trump wins by two, Mark Robin­son is prob­a­bly gov­er­nor if Trump wins by five.”

———–

“The most impor­tant governor’s race of 2024 is about to have its own ver­sion of Trump” By Zach Mon­tel­laro; Politi­co; 03/05/2024

“Robin­son is a bom­bas­tic and engag­ing ora­tor who has often drawn com­par­isons to Trump — for their rapid ris­es in pol­i­tics, the devo­tion they com­mand from the GOP base and the laun­dry lists of scan­dals that have trailed both men. Robinson’s pub­lic con­tro­ver­sies range from agree­ing with anti­se­mit­ic remarks about the glob­al econ­o­my to com­par­ing women who get abor­tions to mur­der­ers.”

Mark Robin­son isn’t Don­ald Trump. But he’s unam­bigu­ous­ly Trumpian, includ­ing the devot­ed fol­low­ing he’s gained from all his bom­bas­tic rhetoric. As Trump put it with his endorse­ment of Robin­son, he’s “Mar­tin Luther King on steroids.” Robin­son once called the Civ­il Rights move­ment a “com­mu­nist plot to sub­vert cap­i­tal­ism,” while lament­ing how “so many free­doms were lost dur­ing the Civ­il Rights move­ment.” Or as Jonathan Felts, a long­time GOP oper­a­tive who is help­ing lead a pro-Robin­son super PAC, put it, “If you were craft­ing a script and try­ing to design a char­ac­ter that would be the per­fect char­ac­ter for the moment where pol­i­tics are in 2024, you’d be hard pressed to find much dif­fer­ent than what you have with Mark Robin­son.”

And yet it’s that same Trumpian per­sona that has Democ­rats sali­vat­ing over a run against Robin­son. Mark Robin­son’s big pri­ma­ry vic­to­ry is a polit­i­cal ‘micro­cosm in the macro­cosm’ moment. It’s a dement­ed moment, but it’s in keep­ing with a polit­i­cal zeit­geist that has both Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats bet­ting their hopes on the notion that the pub­lic’s response to dis­tilled MAGA-style pol­i­tics will work to their favor:

...
Democ­rats are prac­ti­cal­ly beg­ging for the chance to raise that his­to­ry dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion, hop­ing it will sink Robin­son. But Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers appear entire­ly unin­ter­est­ed in lit­i­gat­ing it.

Robin­son has faced a hand­ful of promi­nent oppo­nents for the GOP nod. State Trea­sur­er Dale Fol­well entered the race first, but has been unable to muster the resources to be com­pet­i­tive. For­mer Rep. Mark Walk­er was in the race for a bit before drop­ping out to try to win back a spot in Con­gress. But the most notable can­di­date is Bill Gra­ham, a self-fund­ing attor­ney who has poured mil­lions into his cam­paign and has the back­ing of the state’s senior sen­a­tor, Thom Tillis.

...

“Mark Robin­son? He sug­gest­ed the Holo­caust wasn’t real. Down­played the Nazis. Pro­mot­ed Hitler pro­pa­gan­da,” Gra­ham says in one of his ads, ref­er­enc­ing a report from Jew­ish Insid­er last year unearthing old social media posts. Anoth­er ad high­lights com­ments Robin­son made at a church that Chris­tians are “called to be led by men,” not women.

Robin­son has called his social media posts “poor­ly word­ed” but said that there “is no anti­semitism stand­ing here” and that he believes women can be lead­ers. He and his allies have dis­missed the elec­tabil­i­ty argu­ment, say­ing his crit­ics just don’t under­stand the mod­ern GOP.

“If you were craft­ing a script and try­ing to design a char­ac­ter that would be the per­fect char­ac­ter for the moment where pol­i­tics are in 2024, you’d be hard pressed to find much dif­fer­ent than what you have with Mark Robin­son,” said Jonathan Felts, a long­time GOP oper­a­tive who is help­ing lead a pro-Robin­son super PAC.

Robinson’s intra­party crit­ics, he said, “are the peo­ple who are pas­sion­ate­ly long­ing for the good old days when the Repub­li­can Par­ty was the Cham­ber of Com­merce par­ty.”

...

The state’s GOP polit­i­cal elite, with the excep­tion of Tillis, also haven’t got­ten in Robinson’s way. Some promi­nent Repub­li­cans — includ­ing Sen. Ted Budd and state Sen­ate Repub­li­can leader Phil Berg­er — endorsed his cam­paign, and most oth­ers sat on the side­lines.

Trump him­self looms over the pri­ma­ry as well. After heap­ing praise on Robin­son for months, Trump for­mal­ly endorsed him at a ral­ly in the state on Sat­ur­day, call­ing him “Mar­tin Luther King on steroids.”
...

So with Robin­son serv­ing as Trump’s sur­ro­gate in the North Car­oli­na gov­er­nor’s race, it’s worth tak­ing a look at one of the more notable areas where Trump’s and Robin­son’s pol­i­tics align: a will­ing­ness to embrace the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church. As we’ve seen, Trump actu­al­ly spent the 20th anniver­sary of the 9/11 attacks giv­ing the keynote address at the “Ral­ly of Hope Think Tank” event orga­nized by Hak Ja Han Moon, wid­ow of Uni­fi­ca­tion Church founder Sun Myung Moon. Trump was­n’t the only Repub­li­can stan­dard bear­er to attend the event. Newt Gin­grich also appeared on video at the event. This was all fol­low­ing a sim­i­lar event months ear­li­er that includ­ed appear­ances by both Mike Pom­peo and Mike Pence. And while Trump’s (and Gin­grich’s) deci­sion to attend that ral­ly on the 20th anniver­sary of 9/11 may have been a par­tic­u­lar­ly taste­less dis­play of the GOP’s long-stand­ing deep ties to the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, it’s not like this is a Trumpian-era devel­op­ment. These ties go back decades. Which is a reminder that the overt­ly cultish nature of the mod­ern day GOP isn’t some new devel­op­ment. Trump is sim­ply a much more promi­nent cult leader than we’ve seen before.

And that alliance of cults brings us to the fol­low­ing report on a 2019 appear­ance by Mark Robin­son on the Rod of Iron Min­istries pod­cast. That would be the same Penn­syl­va­nia-based Rod of Iron Min­istries found­ed by Rev­erend Moon’s son, Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon. As we saw, the Rod of Iron Min­istries does­n’t just ped­dle “Satan­ic pedophile elite com­mu­nists rule the world” nar­ra­tives, but also seem­ing­ly wor­ships AR-15 rifles as some sort of divine gift to god’s cho­sen peo­ple. As we can see in the near­ly hour long inter­view of Robin­son, all of that world­view was ful­ly on dis­play. For exam­ple, at 19 min­utes, Moon talks about how fig­ures like Hillary Clin­ton and George Soros become lit­er­al Satanists who are above the law. At 50 min­utes, Moon explains Hitler’s ratio­nale for the Holo­caust as pay­ing down Ger­many’s debt to pay back ‘the bankers’. With Robin­son com­plete­ly agree­ing with Moon the whole time, despite his cam­paign’s lat­er denials:

Raleigh News & Observ­er

NC Lt. Gov. can­di­date appeared with reli­gious leader who plans to become king of the US

By Col­in Camp­bell
Updat­ed Octo­ber 22, 2020 12:21 PM
This sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished Octo­ber 22, 2020, 11:44 AM.

RALEIGH — The Repub­li­can can­di­date for lieu­tenant gov­er­nor voiced agree­ment with a reli­gious leader who says that the “Four Horse­men of the Apoc­a­lypse” are the Roth­schild fam­i­ly of “inter­na­tion­al bankers that rule every sin­gle ... cen­tral bank,” the CIA, Chi­na and Islam.

The con­ver­sa­tion is part of an inter­view that Mark Robin­son did in 2019 with Pas­tor Sean Moon, whose father Sun Myung Moon found­ed the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, which some have called a cult.

Sean Moon’s Penn­syl­va­nia-based church believes that the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment will col­lapse and that he will ulti­mate­ly become king of the Unit­ed States, accord­ing to a 2018 Wash­ing­ton Post pro­file.

Robin­son is up against Demo­c­ra­t­ic state Rep. Yvonne Hol­ley to replace Dan For­est, the out­go­ing lieu­tenant gov­er­nor who is chal­leng­ing Gov. Roy Coop­er. Robinson’s cam­paign has already faced crit­i­cism for Face­book posts in which he makes deroga­to­ry com­ments about trans­gen­der peo­ple, Mus­lims, a Jew­ish film­mak­er, for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and fel­low Black Amer­i­cans who sup­port Democ­rats.

But the Greens­boro gun-rights activist voic­es oth­er con­tro­ver­sial views in the inter­view with Moon, which was post­ed to YouTube and fea­tures the pas­tor wear­ing cam­ou­flage and a crown made of rifle shells.

Moon explains his the­o­ry about the Four Horse­men of the Apoc­a­lypse, includ­ing the com­ments about the Roth­schild fam­i­ly, which is a long­stand­ing anti-Semit­ic trope about the influ­ence of wealthy Jew­ish bankers.

Robin­son then responds “that’s exact­ly right. It’s amaz­ing to me, that we live in this age of infor­ma­tion where you can go online and you can find all this infor­ma­tion, and it’s not hid­den from any­body.”

Asked about the inter­view this week, Robinson’s cam­paign sought to dis­tance the can­di­date from Moon’s “Four Horse­men” the­o­ry.

“At no point in the inter­view does Mark talk about the four horse­men, and after the state­ment is made by the inter­view­er, Mark goes on to talk about how our cul­ture, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the media, despis­es Chris­tian­i­ty and the Bible,” cam­paign man­ag­er Con­rad Pogorzel­s­ki said in an email.

He crit­i­cized The News & Observ­er for writ­ing about the video. “This video has under 300 views, and was post­ed over a year ago. This is clear­ly the fake news media try­ing to destroy not only a con­ser­v­a­tive, but a Chris­t­ian just two weeks before an elec­tion.”

...

Also in the inter­view, Robin­son crit­i­cizes a Fayet­teville church that has gay pas­tors.

“It’s a homo­sex­u­al church,” he tells Moon. “You know, those two things don’t go togeth­er! ... If some­body had told me when I was 15 that there would be church­es that open­ly allow gay pas­tors and gay mar­riage, I would’ve told them they’re crazy.”

As the two con­tin­ue their dis­cus­sion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the church, Moon says that “the wage for sin is death,” and Robin­son said he’s “absolute­ly right. ... If you are a homo­sex­u­al you are more than wel­come to come to this Church. We will pray with you that you can deal with that the same way the gam­bler deals with his gam­bling, the alco­holic deals with his alco­holism.”

...

Robinson’s cam­paign does stand behind his com­ments to Moon about same-sex mar­riage.

“In the inter­view, Mark talks about the Bib­li­cal def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage as being between one man and one woman and that for a pas­tor to con­tra­dict the Bible would be fool­ish,” Pogorzel­s­ki said.

————

“NC Lt. Gov. can­di­date appeared with reli­gious leader who plans to become king of the US” By Col­in Camp­bell; Raleigh News & Observ­er; 10/22/2020

“Sean Moon’s Penn­syl­va­nia-based church believes that the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment will col­lapse and that he will ulti­mate­ly become king of the Unit­ed States, accord­ing to a 2018 Wash­ing­ton Post pro­file. ”

An inter­view with the future “King of the Unit­ed States”. Robin­son sure has inter­est­ing polit­i­cal pals. And as he made com­plete­ly clear dur­ing the inter­view, Robin­son’s the­ol­o­gy, which can’t be sep­a­rat­ed from his polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy, is com­plete­ly in line with Moon’s. Includ­ing all the QAnon-style anti-Semit­ic tropes about wealthy Jew­ish bankers:

...
Robin­son is up against Demo­c­ra­t­ic state Rep. Yvonne Hol­ley to replace Dan For­est, the out­go­ing lieu­tenant gov­er­nor who is chal­leng­ing Gov. Roy Coop­er. Robinson’s cam­paign has already faced crit­i­cism for Face­book posts in which he makes deroga­to­ry com­ments about trans­gen­der peo­ple, Mus­lims, a Jew­ish film­mak­er, for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and fel­low Black Amer­i­cans who sup­port Democ­rats.

But the Greens­boro gun-rights activist voic­es oth­er con­tro­ver­sial views in the inter­view with Moon, which was post­ed to YouTube and fea­tures the pas­tor wear­ing cam­ou­flage and a crown made of rifle shells.

Moon explains his the­o­ry about the Four Horse­men of the Apoc­a­lypse, includ­ing the com­ments about the Roth­schild fam­i­ly, which is a long­stand­ing anti-Semit­ic trope about the influ­ence of wealthy Jew­ish bankers.

Robin­son then responds “that’s exact­ly right. It’s amaz­ing to me, that we live in this age of infor­ma­tion where you can go online and you can find all this infor­ma­tion, and it’s not hid­den from any­body.”
...

And while we can see Robin­son’s cam­paign back­ing away from the con­tent of this inter­view after the media report­ed on it, don’t for­get the entire thing is up on Youtube. It’s an hour-long love fest between the two:

...
Asked about the inter­view this week, Robinson’s cam­paign sought to dis­tance the can­di­date from Moon’s “Four Horse­men” the­o­ry.

“At no point in the inter­view does Mark talk about the four horse­men, and after the state­ment is made by the inter­view­er, Mark goes on to talk about how our cul­ture, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the media, despis­es Chris­tian­i­ty and the Bible,” cam­paign man­ag­er Con­rad Pogorzel­s­ki said in an email.

He crit­i­cized The News & Observ­er for writ­ing about the video. “This video has under 300 views, and was post­ed over a year ago. This is clear­ly the fake news media try­ing to destroy not only a con­ser­v­a­tive, but a Chris­t­ian just two weeks before an elec­tion.”
...

Will Mark Robin­son have to defend his ties to this dan­ger­ous MAGA-cen­tric cult as part of his race for the gov­er­nor­ship? We’ll see. But, again, it’s not like the GOP’s ties to the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church, or its off­shoots, are any­thing new. If the GOP’s Moonie ties weren’t an issue for the past four decades, what are the odds they’ll become an issue today? It’s old news. Still rel­e­vant old news, sure, but it’s hard to imag­ine the pub­lic will real­ly care. And as we also saw, both par­ties are expect­ing the race of North Car­oli­na’s gov­er­nor will be extreme close.

So try not to be sur­prised if Mark Robin­son ends up as the state’s next gov­er­nor. And while a Gov­er­nor Robin­son will obvi­ous­ly oper­ate as an acolyte of the Cult of Trump while serv­ing on the job, keep in mind that the GOP’s ulti­mate­ly cult is the ‘pow­er at all costs’ cult, and that’s a very large cult with a lot of mem­bers. Includ­ing one notable mem­ber with a crown of bul­lets and dreams of being Amer­i­ca’s next king.