North Carolina GOP candidate refusing to take down ugly religious and racist Facebook smears as GOP looks the other way

On Saturday, the News & Observerreported on a series of anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and transphobic Facebook rants by Mark Robinson, an African-American gun rights activist who won the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor of North Carolina in a surprising upset earlier this year.

"Robinson and his campaign did not respond to multiple calls and emails seeking an interview for this story," reported Colin Campbell. "But he told WRAL News last month that he won’t apologize for any of the comments posted to Facebook over the past several years. 'I’m not ashamed of anything that I post,' he told the TV station." Meanwhile, the North Carolina Republican Party has not commented on the issue and "continues to run ads featuring Robinson with the party’s candidate for governor."

Even prior to winning the nomination, Robinson had a long history of controversial statements, including that gay people are "devil-worshipping child molesters" and that the teenage activists who survived the Parkland school shooting are "silly little immature media prosti-tots."

Among the newly discovered things Robinson has said on Facebook: That Muslim-Americans are "invaders," that Democratic election wins are "what happen when negroes don’t read," that transgender identity is a "mass delusion" calculated "to turn God’s creation ... into a sickening image of rebellion to glorify Satan," and that the film Black Panther was "created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by (a) Satanic Marxist ... to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets." He also claimed Michelle Obama is secretly a man and referred to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) as "Ol’ Maxie Pad" Waters.

"North Carolina’s lieutenant governor presides over Senate sessions and can cast tie-breaking votes — a scenario that’s rare now with a strong Republican majority, but one that could become common if Democrats win more seats and the chamber is closely divided," noted the News & Observer. "The lieutenant governor serves on the State Board of Education and the Board of Community Colleges and chairs the Energy Policy Council."