After becoming the Republican candidate for governor thanks to winning North Carolina’s Super Tuesday primary, Mark Robinson has been a field day for late night comedians and political pundits thanks to a well-documented history of incendiary remarks. John Oliver did not miss out on that feast.
During Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, Oliver went long on Robinson’s rise to MAGA stardom, which included an endorsement from Donald Trump who called the controversial politician “Martin Luther King on steroids.” Later, Trump would call Robinson “Martin Luther King times two” and note that the North Carolina candidate should “like” that comparison.
“Do you know how racist you have to be to give a Black person a compliment that starts by quantifying their human value, and then ends with a demand?” Oliver quipped. “It’s a lot.”
Here’s the thing though: Robinson is not a fan of MLK, which is just one in a sea of many controversial stances he’s expressed over the years. According to Robinson, the civil rights movement was bad, actually, because it caused the loss of freedom and went against the values of free market capitalism.
Via The Daily Beast:
“That’s genuinely shocking. Not so much that someone is making controversial, inaccurate claims about the civil rights movement on a podcast, but that it’s happening without Joe Rogan occasionally popping in to say ‘That’s wild, bro’ before pivoting to an ad for a protein supplement that promises to make your dick veinier,” Oliver said.
Robinson’s position that the sit-in protests at a Greensboro lunch counter in 1960 were counterproductive to free-market capitalism “is not just the argument of an asshole, but an asshole on steroids,” Oliver said. “An asshole times two.”
Oliver also went to town on Robinson calling women murderers for having abortions and dug up some of the politician’s antisemitic rants on Facebook. To the surprise of no one, Robinson is big into denying the Holocaust. However, the candidate has attempted to downplay his rhetoric by calling it “poorly worded.”
“I think the main issue there was his flagrant antisemitism being worded at all,” Oliver said. “This guy clearly isn’t Martin Luther King on steroids. If anything, he’s much more like your sh*ttiest uncle on Ambien.”
(Via The Daily Beast)