North Carolina
North Carolina is on the verge of getting a MAGA governor. Why do we let this happen?
It’s not surprising that MAGA politicians get by on scare tactics and little substance but I have to believe that will soon end and that North Carolina will help that along.
Trump’s controversial pick for North Carolina governor wins primary
A bid for governor in North Carolina is garnering a lot of media reaction due to a controversial Republican candidate, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.
Straight Arrow News
There’s a type of person who thrives off of angering people online. They are commonly referred to as a “troll,” someone who likes being provocative to get a rise out of netizens who come across the post.
Donald Trump proved in 2016 that being a troll can win you an election and is currently proving it can get you a second nomination.
In North Carolina, my home state, there are two trolls on the ballot this year. Trump, who you’ve heard of, and another that hopes to one day be just as famous.
There has been a lot of recent coverage of North Carolina Republican Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson. Earlier this week, the Washington Post wrote about Robinson’s Facebook posts defending abusers like Harvey Weinstein.
“Harvey Weinstein and the rest of these high-profile Hollywood elites were merely sacrificial lambs,” Robinson said in a 2017 Facebook post, when dozens of women came forward to share their stories of Weinstein’s sexual abuse. “They have been slaughtered in order to smear the airwaves with talk of ‘sexual harassment’ and how pervasive the culture of ‘toxic masculinity’ is in America.”
I’ve been following Robinson’s rise for years. It isn’t the first time the gubernatorial candidate has made headlines for the outlandish things he says. It also doesn’t seem to be affecting his political career.
Mark Robinson’s greatest hits of offensive comments
In 2021, he caught statewide attention for referring to gay and transgender people as “filth.” A year later, he faced scrutiny for a 2012 Facebook comment where he admitted to paying for an abortion in 1989, despite being staunchly pro-life as a politician. There was a period where his Facebook posts could have constituted a column a week, with how controversial they are.
Despite the negative press attention, Robinson has a fighting chance of becoming North Carolina governor in November. Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, says the odds are almost 50/50.
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“He is good at getting his name out there, and he was able to win the primary, and that in North Carolina gives you about a coin toss chance to win the general,” Cooper told me.
With Robinson, North Carolina has created another MAGA politician whose words never seem to hurt their chances of winning an election.
A quick ascent to political celebrity
In 2018, Robinson was just a regular guy when a video of him speaking at a Greensboro city council meeting was shared by Mark Walker, the district’s U.S. Representative at the time.
It gained millions of views on Facebook and landed Robinson on “Fox & Friends.” In 2020, he ran for lieutenant governor of North Carolina, a position with name recognition yet very little power. Despite never holding public office, he beat Democratic candidate Yvonne Lewis Holley and took 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’s convention and the Conservative Political Action Conference. He’s been on Fox News repeatedly. He has more than 175,000 followers on Facebook and 114,500 on X, formerly Twitter. Recently, New York magazine went so far as to refer to him in a headline as “MAGA’s Great Black Hope.”
Robinson is made in Trump’s MAGA image – including scare tactics
In a way, Robinson’s rise to power mirrors Trump’s. Like Trump and other MAGA Republicans, Robinson thrives in the culture war. It extends past his online persona despite what little power he has as lieutenant governor. In 2021, he began a task force to out teachers “indoctrinating” students. It was at the height of school board debates on “critical race theory.”
Despite the promise of proof and 506 submissions to the task force in the first six weeks, there was little evidence that teachers were actually corrupting the state’s youth. For a MAGA politician, the end result is never the point. The objective is to make as much noise about a social issue as possible, rile up the base and create a fake crusade against anything deemed “woke.” When the proof isn’t there, there is never an admittance of wrongs. They just move on to the next boogeyman.
Despite the scare tactics, it’s clear that Robinson reflects some of the state’s politics. In the last year alone, the state rolled back abortion access by instituting a 12-week ban and has villainized trans people through a series of anti-LGBTQ bills.
On the other hand, he has said things that even give Republicans pause. While acting as governor in October 2023, he declared the state’s support of Israel in the war with Hamas. It resulted in people calling him out for past anti-Semitic remarks he’d made, including a Facebook post that outright denied the Holocaust happened.
The right does not seem to care about the horrible things Robinson has said – if they do, they aren’t being vocal enough about it.
“Would he be better off if he wasn’t so outlandish?” Cooper asks. “Probably, probably at the margins. But no rhetoric is going to tank a Republican or a Democratic candidate for a statewide office in North Carolina. It’s just too close, and crossover voting is too rare.”
It’s frustrating that nothing seems capable of sinking Robinson’s gubernatorial odds, despite the horrible things he has said over the years.
It also isn’t surprising. MAGA Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, and Trump himself have been able to soar past their conspiracy theories and social media posts to become legitimate threats to democracy, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves that there’s no way they can win. That’s exactly how people treated Trump in 2016, and we saw what happened there. North Carolina is on the verge of finding out after November.
Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter, @sara__pequeno and Facebook facebook.com/PequenoWrites
More than 100 dogs were rescued from an apparent puppy mill in North Carolina where they were kept in “egregious conditions”, an animal shelter said.
The SPCA of Wake county on Wednesday removed 101 dogs from a home that appeared to have been functioning as a puppy mill. In a statement online, the shelter said that the dogs had been “surrounded by their own waste, packed 5 or 6 to a cage and stacked floor to ceiling, or free roaming in cramped quarters and filth”.
The shelter, working alongside Raleigh animal control, also said that there had been numerous mother dogs with very young nursing puppies, adding that 19 of those dogs were now in SPCA Wake’s care.
“These events unfolded very quickly. Within an hour of receiving this call for help, we were on the property ready to take as many pets as possible,” the shelter said.
Pictures posted online showed puppies of various breeds in cages and with matted fur as they were being cared for by shelter employees. Speaking to CBS 17, SPCA Wake spokesperson Samantha Ranlet said that many of the dogs were toy poodle mixes, pomeranians, chihuahuas, yorkies and other small “doodle” mixes.
In a follow-up post on Friday, the shelter said that its medical team had been treating each dog’s individual needs, adding that many of them were suffering from skin and dental issues.
“The matted dirty fur is coming off in heaps,” the shelter said.
Additional pictures posted online showed clumps of matted fur being trimmed from dogs of varying sizes.
“We’re seeing a lot of smiles from these guys. This is the biggest moment in these dogs’ lives, and we are feeling so grateful to be a part of their healing. Thank you to everyone who has donated or reached out in support of these efforts. This rescue is a big undertaking, and we can’t do it without you,” the shelter said.
In addition to the 101 dogs, the homeowner, who police said was “cooperative”, also surrendered 21 chickens.
Speaking to CBS 17, Ranlet said: “The dogs in our care are being medically evaluated and some moved into foster homes … They will be placed up for adoption once they have received veterinary care and recuperated. We need to make sure they are healthy and rehabilitated so they can start fresh as somebody’s family members.”
It remains unclear whether the homeowner will face charges. The Guardian has reached out to the Raleigh police department for comment.
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North Carolina
400-pound monster alligator named Pepe ‘detained’ for ‘being a dinosaur without proper papers’ in NC
The scales of justice came for Pepe.
Cops detained – and rescued – a monster 10-foot alligator they nicknamed Pepe the Gator sunbathing on a busy road in North Carolina and “charged” him on suspicion of being a “dinosaur.”
“Witnesses say he was just chilling and snapping, clearly ignoring the ‘no loitering or lounging on roadways’ sign,” the Onslow County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a playful press release last week. “Pepe has been cited for Suspicion of Being a Dinosaur Without Proper Papers, Public Loitering with Intent to Sunbathe, and Obstructing Traffic.”
The responding deputies and officers from the NC Wildlife Resources Commission who got the call on May 25 managed to safely remove Pepe, but not before posing for pictures where they straddle him like rodeo riders.
“He was 10 feet long, 400 pounds. He was an absolute monster,” Trevor Dunnell, spokesman for the Onslow County Sheriff’s Office told the Post Thursday.
“They did a fantastic job of wrangling him.”
To indicate the scale of the gator, Dunnell pointed out how, in the picture, even with three grown men on top of him, Pepe’s still not covered.
“The picture really doesn’t do it justice, I mean 10 feet … 10 feet is a basketball goal, that is a massive creature,” he said.
Although 10 feet seems big, it’s nothing compared to the largest gator on record – 14 feet and 3 and a half inches.
Deputies and wildlife officials used a towel to cover Pepe’s eyes — eye contact is what triggers the animal’s notorious death roll, Dunnell explained — and electrical tape to seal his mouth shut.
“It was definitely some MacGyver stuff they had to use,” he said. “He may not have a good time during the removal, but he was playfully enough about it later to understand that, ‘Hey, man, you gotta do what you gotta do.’”
Dunnell said the office received blowback from people online wishing the cops had just left Pepe alone. but Dunnell was quick to point out that leaving the reptile on the side of the road could have posed a hazard not only to residents but also to the gator.
“You never know what can happen when kids are running around,” he said. “And the gator could wind up in the middle of the road. It could hurt drivers but it could hurt him, too.”
Dunnell said he hopes to see body camera footage of Pepe’s apprehension. The two deputies and the wildlife official in the picture are happy to be riding him, Dunnell said, adding that if authorities encounter another Pepe, they’ll know who to call.
“But some deputies were absolutely not fine,” he said. “When they got back, they were saying, ‘You’re not going to catch me on that thing. I’m not going to go anywhere near it!’”
Pepe was far from home, and Dunnell suspects that it was a hot day and he was looking for a good spot to bask.
“How far he wandered is anybody’s guess,” he said. “It must’ve been several miles at least.”
After further investigation, Dunnell said, they declined to charge Pepe. Instead, they drove him to a boat ramp at nearby Camp Geiger, a satellite facility of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune.
“I think we’ve touched base with the gator and let him know we dropped the charges,” he joked.
“Pepe’s back to his normal routine, he’s hanging out near the beach and lounging in his natural habitat, hunting for his food and looking for a girlfriend.”
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