Go outside or go to jail: Top NC Republican targets trans restroom rights
Christian nationalist North Carolina Republican Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, currently the leading candidate for the GOP nomination for governor, launched an attack on transgender women years after the Tar Heel State's last GOP governor cost the state millions – and possibly billions – of dollars, and cost him his political career over the very same issue.
“We're going to defend women in this state,” vowed Robinson, according to WUNC, at a campaign stop earlier this month. “That means if you're a man on Friday night, and all the sudden on Saturday, you feel like a woman, and you want to go in the women's bathroom in the mall, you will be arrested — or whatever we got to do to you.”
"In campaign speeches in recent weeks," WUNC added, "Robinson suggested that people who previously identified as male should be 'arrested' if they go in a women’s bathroom. Instead, he suggests they should 'find a corner outside somewhere' to relieve themselves."
In a different campaign speech Robinson said, “if you are confused, find a corner outside somewhere to go. We're not tearing society down because of this.”
Last year at a campaign rally speech talking about "problems" in the state Robinson attacked "so-called educators" and told supporters, "two plus two does not equal transgender."
The Lt. Governor, a Trump supporter and endorser, has declared, "I’m MAGA all the way."
Last year, The Jerusalem Post reported that after Robinson "was elected to the state’s second-highest office in 2020, revelations emerged that he was the prolific author of Facebook posts downplaying the threat of Nazism, invoking antisemitic stereotypes and targeting other minority groups."
And last month, the Carolina Public Press reported that Robinson "remains under a N.C. State Board of Elections investigation into allegations of more than $500,000 of campaign finance violations in 2020, according to Bob Hall, the former executive director of Democracy NC and a campaign finance watchdog."
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In 2022, WRAL reported, "Robinson has a history of financial trouble, including three bankruptcies in 1998, 1999 and 2003 and seven years of unpaid federal income taxes, court records show." Confronted with "five unpaid bills from 2006 to 2018," Robinson told the news outlet, "I'm not very good at math."
Robinson, should he win the nomination, would likely face North Carolina Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, who is currently leading in the polls in the Democratic primary.
Watch the short clip of Robinson's remarks below or at this link.