(WGHP) — A recent podcast appearance brought an old clip of North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor back to the forefront just before he appeared at high-profile speaking engagements as North Carolina’s highest-ranking Republican.
Lt. Gov. Robinson appeared on “The Manhood Hour” with Sebastian Gorka, former deputy assistant to President Trump, on Feb. 15, in an episode entitled “Being victimized does not make you a victim,” a quote from Robinson said during the episode.
Robinson on ‘The Manhood Hour’
Robinson and Gorka begin the episode by discussing Robinson’s viral appearance at a Greensboro City Council meeting, which went viral and turned into an NRA advertisement, launching Robinson, then working for a furniture manufacturing plant and studying at UNCG, into the political landscape.
Gorka turns the topic to gender shortly after, asking “how serious” the assault on gender is from the “radical left.” Robinson agrees, “It is very serious when you look and you see people who have the audacity to sit in front of kindergartners and discuss adult topics like being non-binary and to discuss these adult topics. There’s nothing wrong with adults discussing these things amongst other adults. But when you present these things to children we’re skating on dangerous thin ice here.”
Robinson then discusses “pornographic” material that he said was in North Carolina school libraries, that he presented to the media to show what was being “recommended” to children in schools.
Public education has been a cornerstone of Robinson’s political career since being elected, starting the FACTS Task Force and asking parents and school officials to submit what they believed were “indoctrination materials.” This group inspired smaller local groups that focused on attempting to remove books from area school libraries and advocating for school board candidates during election seasons. Those include the since-disbanded groups Take Back Our Schools in Guilford County, which had drawn calls for investigation from members of the Guilford County Board of Education, and FACTS Task Force 2.0 in Alamance County.
Robinson continues, “So I believe we’re in a very bad place right now, and we need to take a step back and realize if you want to have conversations about gender fluidity or about being non-binary or any of those associated topics, those are topics for adult people to have on their own in private. Those are not topics that should be shared with children at any school and should never ever be shared with minor children that are not your own children that you don’t have purview over.”
Robinson’s 2021 take
“I think the ‘red-pilling,’ the wake-up moment, for tens if not hundreds of millions of Americans is this transgender extremism,” Gorka says as a lead-in to playing a clip of Robinson speaking at a church event in August 2021 in Raleigh. The host doesn’t offer context on-air beyond praising it as his “favorite” clip that he’s played on his podcast.
“Red-pilling” is a term used primarily in conspiratorial spaces to describe the moment that a person “takes the red pill” and becomes “aware” of a conspiracy. This term was taken from the Wachowski sisters’ “Matrix” films, where Keanu Reeves’s hero Neo must choose to take the red pill or the blue pill. That is, to become aware of the matrix or to go back to his normal life, ignorant of the machinations behind the scene.
At the top of the clip, which is from part of a sermon where he discussed what he believed he wasn’t supposed to say as a politician, Robinson said, “I’m not supposed to say this but there are only two genders. Only man and woman.
“You can go to the doctor and get cut up. You can go down to the dress shop and get made up. You can go down there and get drugged up, but at the end of the day, you were just a drugged-up, dressed-up, made-up, cut-up man or woman,” he continued. “You ain’t changed what God put in you, that DNA. You can’t transcend God’s creation. I don’t care how hard you try. The transgender movement in this country, if there’s a movement in this country that is demonic and that is full of spirit of the antichrist, it is the transgender movement.
“I’m not afraid to stand up and tell the truth about that issue. They dragging our kids down into the pit of hell,” Robinson said. “Two plus two don’t equal transgender. That’s right. It equals four. We need to get back to teaching them how to read instead of teaching them how to go to hell.”
The clip ends there on the podcast, but further in the sermon on the video, he rails against climate change, saying he’s tired of hearing people say “follow the science” by saying, “You don’t even know what gender you are, what do you know about science?
“We don’t even need science to prove what gender you are. There’s two ways we can do this thing. There’s a simple way; we can go around the corner here to the bathroom, drop your pants or whatever you got on and I can show you what you are,” Robinson says. “Or I could take a little blood out of your arm and take it to a scientist, he can put it on a little Petrie dish and look at it ‘Oh this is the blood of a white male.’ Doesn’t matter what you did down there at the therapy doctor,” he said.
He goes on to say that we don’t live in a “theocracy” and people are allowed to do what they want, but “I don’t have to follow you in your delusion.”
Robinson’s perspective of gender identity as “topics for adult people to have on their own in private” is a great deal more measured than the fiery speech shared in the clip.
Gorka quips about the off-the-cuff nature of the speech, and Robinson responds, “That was straight from the heart. That was straight off God’s plate. We don’t back up from those words at all because, you know, I have a higher calling than serving in public office.”
Robinson’s recent run
This podcast episode is just one of a number of interviews and engagements that the lieutenant governor has participated in recently. He appeared on a talk show hosted by state representative Jeff McNeely where he discussed his desire for a total abortion ban, referring to North Carolina as a “destination state for death.”
Robinson spoke at CPAC, where he alluded to his potential bid for governorship in 2024, saying it was a “poorly kept secret” that he will run for governor. Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, has announced that he will run.
On Monday, Robinson delivered the GOP response to the “State of the State,” usually a job reserved for the House and Senate leaders.
Governor Cooper cautioned North Carolina politicians against “culture war” issues like LGBTQ rights in his address.
“I challenge this General Assembly to keep us off the front lines of those culture wars that hurt people and cost us jobs so that we can continue our successful bipartisan work,” Cooper said, discussing the economic fallout of 2016’s HB2, which restricted transgender people’s access to bathrooms.
Robinson did not touch on his typical culture war touchstones in his State of the State response, which some opined lacked Robinson’s usual bombast. He emphasized fiscal values, discussing teacher pay and only alluding to “indoctrination” in schools briefly, saying teachers should be teaching students “how to think, not what to think.”
“In our society today, we are so divided, and thoughtful discussion is often replaced with tweets, sound bites and heated rhetoric,” Robinson said.
“Have you identified an epicenter for all of this ideological garbage?” Gorka asks Robinson near the beginning of the podcast, referring to ideas of “undermining the patriarchy” and “toxic masculinity.”
“I know exactly where it comes from,” Robinson said. “It comes from the Marxist, socialist, communist way of thinking. They have to destroy our modus operandi as we know it in this nation, and our modus operandi is the nuclear family.”
