Donald Trump endorses Mark Robinson, who said gays are ‘filth’ and ‘maggots,’ for N.C. governor

Just ahead of North Carolina's primary election on Tuesday, Donald Trump once again threw his weight behind Mark Robinson, repeating his past bizarre claims that the Republican is "better than Martin Luther King" and "Martin Luther King on steroids" at a campaign event in the state Saturday.

“I told that to Mark. I said, ‘I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two.' And he looked at me, and I wasn’t sure — was he angry, because that’s a terrible thing to say? Or was he complimented? I have never figured it out," Trump said, turning to address Robinson directly. "When I said that to you, you looked like, 'I don’t know if I like that comment.' You should like it because you are outstanding and you’re going to be the next governor. So that’s going to be very cool.”

Robinson, the first Black lieutenant governor of North Carolina, has repeatedly made headlines for his contentious remarks about the LGBTQ+ community, as well as anti-Semitic comments including Holocaust denial and promoting reading Adolf Hitler.

Robinson has said that transgender women should be “arrested” for using women’s bathrooms. He’s also said that instead of using the women’s bathroom, trans women should “find a corner outside somewhere to go."

The Republican has described straight couples as “superior” to gay couples as well as equated LGBTQ+ people to “maggots” and “flies," and referred to homosexuality and "transgenderism" as "filth."

“I don’t care how much you cut yourself up, drug yourself up and dress yourself up, you still either one of two things — you either a man or a woman," he said in a 2021 sermon.

In January 2017, Robinson posted on Facebook calling Michelle Obama “he” and “an anti-American, abortion and gay marriage supporting, liberal leftist elitist," writing: "I’ll be glad when he takes his boyfriend and leaves the White House.”

The conservative has also used his Facebook account to call reports of the Holocaust "hogwash" and deny the widely accepted fact that at least 6 million Jews were killed in Nazi Germany, according to local news outlet WRAL. The outlet also reported that Robinson went on a podcast hosted by an alleged cult leader in 2019 and endorsed the host's remarks that Jewish bankers are one of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," next to Muslim people, China, and the CIA.

The Biden administration has condemned Robinson's comments in the past, stating in 2021 that "the role of a leader is to bring people together and stand up for the dignity and rights of everyone; not to spread hate and undermine their own office."