As we reported earlier, the Democrat/media panic set in immediately Tuesday night going into Wednesday in the aftermath of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's decisive victory in the North Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary race, with the usual accusations of sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, and extremism being thrown with wild abandon.
In what should be considered the "evening update" to that post, the media smear merchants are at it once again, with the Huffington Post taking the lead this time around in spreading the latest out-of-context quote and spinning it to mean something it didn't.
Jennifer Bendery, a senior politics reporterette for the HuffPo, penned a piece in which she declared that Robinson, in 2020 comments that were conveniently "unearthed" not even 24 hours after he declared victory, said in a nutshell that he preferred to live in the day "where women couldn't vote."
Here was the Twitter teaser she posted:
NEW:
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) March 6, 2024
Newly unearthed video of N.C. GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson in 2020: "I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote." https://t.co/dAlCe2DhPL
In the article itself, she also used similar framing in the opening paragraphs - which are what people usually read the most to form opinions about a story. It wasn't until midway through that context was given - which undercut what she was suggesting (that Robinson would prefer women couldn't vote):
During this event, Robinson, who was running for lieutenant governor at the time, recalled someone recently asking conservative activist Candace Owens to pick which version of America would make America “great again,” one where “Black people were swinging from cheap trees” or one where women weren’t allowed to vote.
Robinson said he would definitely return to the days in America when women were denied the right to vote “because in those days we had people who fought for real social change, and they were called Republicans.”
While that last quote contains part of the story, it doesn't give all of it. In the sentence immediately after he said "and they were called Republicans," Robinson said "And they are the reason why women can vote today."
Though Bendery didn't share the video on her Twitter page, she did include it in her article - likely assuming most people either wouldn't watch it or would watch it up to the point they heard what she wanted them to hear.
Since dishonest partisans are sharing only a partial clip on the Twitter machine, here's the fuller version of the clip in question:
Refreshingly, people who I wouldn't expect to come to Robinson's defense jumped in to set the record straight, like Bulwark White House correspondent Andrew Egger:
Okay, look, Robinson did in fact say all these words in this order, but if you watch the clip it's plain he *wasn't* saying he thinks women should lose the vote. He was making a way too cute point about how he wants Republicans to see themselves as fighters for social change. https://t.co/0QynJiOBMD
— Andrew Egger (@EggerDC) March 6, 2024
... and Dispatch senior editor John McCormack:
In the video clip, Robinson goes on to say he's a Republican *because of* the 19th amendment.
— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) March 6, 2024
He was clearly trying to credit the GOP for women's suffrage, not saying the world was better off without it.https://t.co/qk8kePbe5i pic.twitter.com/HMAeymrAwH
I should point out that this wasn't the only media smear about Robinson that encountered pushback Wednesday. YouTuber and MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen pushed the falsehood that Robinson was a Holocaust denier by - surprise surprise - using an out-of-context quote. The in-context quote, however, told a different story:
Mr. "No Lie" is once again spreading a lie.
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 6, 2024
Here is the full quote from Mark Robinson where as you can see, he did not in fact deny the Holocaust.
If he was as bad a guy as these people claimed, they wouldn't feel the need to lie about the things he has said. https://t.co/EXH02DCZ09 pic.twitter.com/qSWUG3sr3H
To be fair, there are legitimate questions for and disagreements people can have with Robinson. But let us state the obvious here for the record: the biggest issue his most rabid critics on the left have with him is the fact that he's a black conservative.
They are absolutely terrified that his rise to prominence in this state - which started with a viral video of a 2018 gun rights speech he gave to a local city council - is going to be a harbinger of things to come for Democrats, with black voters en masse looking beyond the Democrat Party and their failures for better representation in government, something that in fact has already started.
Just like any other outspoken politician, not everything Robinson says can be explained away. But much of what's been said of him by so-called "reporters" and "fact checkers" has been just like what was spelled out in this article - statements and social media posts taken out of context and twisted to mean something they didn't, to paint someone into something they aren't.
It's something Republican candidates for office have to deal with every single election cycle, but Robinson is not the type to go sulking away quietly into the night.
Fortunately, neither are his conservative defenders.
"I should probably create a folder to store all of these responses, because it's going to be a LOOOONG eight months until Election Day and we're going to [see] a lot more of selectively edited quotes," WBT Radio talk show host Pete Kaliner wrote after the HuffPo story went live.
Indeed. The good thing, though, is that pushback often works. Case in point:
Retracted my comments. If you watch the full video, there is absolutely nothing at all wrong with what he said, and this quote, while accurate, is completely misleading when removed from its context. https://t.co/Znsp9HGffj
— Yesh Ginsburg (@yesh222) March 6, 2024
To riff off the far more famous quote, the only way for dishonest people to succeed is for good people to sit back and do nothing when they see and hear the dishonesty happening. Let's make sure to do our part so that people can make informed decisions based on the facts rather than the media's spin on them.
Flashback: Mark Robinson Triggers Democrats During House Hearing on Election Laws
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