“Keep Their Skirt Down”

On what’s said and left unsaid in Milwaukee

The news today will be about the speech last night by JD Vance, an awkward dirge that lingered too long on platitudes before Vance got around to what he’d really come to say: “When we punch, we punch hard.” He was speaking of America’s military might, but the crowd heard, “punch,” they heard “punch hard,” and they roared. A note of interest came when Vance spoke of the 19 loaded guns his grandmother hid in every corner of her house; that made the crowd happy, too. But the darker stuff Vance has been developing with American fascism’s new intellectuals was too subtle: his rejection of the United States as an “idea,” his insistence that it’s a “nation,” by which he seemed most of all to mean the land, and most definitely not the “people who shouldn’t even be here.” How do stop the invasion? “People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home," Vance declared, dismissing democracy and invoking instead blood and soil.

Maybe some in the crowd felt it. More likely most heard “abstractions” and the words that followed were, to them, just that. It’s a delicate balance, fascism. So I asked my managing editor, Armita Mirkarimi, to look not to the headliners but at the warmup acts, the state-level would-be mini-Trumps, those still learning how many fingers of hate to pour into the cocktail.

Meet Mark Robinson.

--Jeff Sharlet

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Mark Robinson stood in front of projected black letters: “Make America Wealthy Again.” He reached his hands into the heavens and thanked Jesus for allowing “us to live in this blessed and prosperous land.” And then he told us who he is.

“I am Mark Robinson. I am the first Black lieutenant governor of North Carolina. And come November, I plan on being the first Black governor of North Carolina.”

Robinson held eye contact with the camera and told us who he isn’t: elite. He grew up in Greensboro with an alcoholic father. Later in life, Mark went bankrupt, lost two jobs, his car, and house. He and his wife laid awake at night, wondering which bills would go unpaid. His “faith” saved him. He does not say what, exactly, his faith is. He kept “working hard” and now, his feet are pillars on the stage at the Republican National Convention, running in North Carolina’s gubernatorial race.

His voice boomed: gas, groceries. Factories, closing. There is no hope.

But the man who will restore hope is Donald J. Trump. To Robinson, the man who will work hard for the American people and protect manufacturing jobs is Donald J. Trump. Robinson promised that Trump will breathe life into the American Dream. 

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On July 15, Robinson stood underneath the white light of the Republican National Convention. He told a story of his Greensboro upbringing as American Bible: Come from anywhere, work hard enough, and maybe one day, you’ll stand on the RNC stage. He put words to the longing for the American Dream. But underneath the description of anguish over the price of gas and the bankruptcy notice, lies abhorrent claims.

On a 2019 Facebook Live stream, Robinson said women seeking abortions should “keep their skirt down.”

In a 2017 Facebook post, Robinson wrote, “There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered.” Robinson never gives us the reason but the quotes around 6 million innocent Jews killed by the Nazi regime speak volumes.

“Adolf Hitler is dead,” Robinson wrote underneath a list of Democrats who made comparisons between President Trump and the Nazi leader, “MARXIST SOCIALISM is ALIVE. NATIONAL SOCIALISM is dead.”

In 2020, Robinson reminisced: “I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote.” He then tried to explain how the Republican Party was integral to the suffragist’s movement.   

Last month, Robinson gave a speech at a church, describing “evil” threats to Christianity and stating, “Some folks need killing.” He walked back the claims in an interview with ABC11.  "When we talk about those things, we talk about them in a historical context.”

The historical context of “killing” is “killing.”

The projected letters on the RNC stage, “Make America Wealthy Again,” are gilded. They reflect an artificial glow on Mark Robinson. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve before becoming the first Black Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina in 2021. Trump endorsed him and in turn, Robinson called the former President “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

After Robinson’s RNC speech, news organizations fact checked.

“It is true that grocery prices have jumped by over 20% since Biden was sworn in, but gas prices aren’t double what they were when he took office.”  

“When Trump left office, [unemployment] was at 6.4%, far from historic lows.”

The numbers don’t stick. They don’t linger like Robinson’s sweeping phrases., “Under President Trump the American dream was alive and well. Under President Trump, there was hope. And we need that now more than ever.” “Make America Great Again” appears golden.

They are spoken by a man who said, “some folks need killing.” Which folks? A lieutenant governor who denied the Holocaust. He stood on stage and talked of hope in America. On other stages, in other forums, he’s called the LGBTQ+ community “filth.” He says immigrants are  “invaders.”  Mass murder, he thinks, may be just desserts for the sin of abortion. “Our own government is promoting the murder of infants. Do you think that somehow — people talk about karma all the time.”

Mark Robinson planted his feet on the first day of the Republican National Convention, and the words, “Keep their skirt down,” trailed behind him.