Thread by @JoekillianPW

Gang, we need to talk about Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn and former U.S. Rep - and current U.S. Senate candidate - Mark Walker.

Let me suggest we start here - but stick with me.

#NCPol #MarkRobinson #Markwalker #Madisoncawthorn

pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2021/10/09/rob…

As you will all be aware, Robinson is at the center of yet another controversy over inflammatory remarks about LGBTQ people.

This latest one is over video of his characterizing LGBTQ people as "filth" that shouldn't be discussed in public schools.

pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2021/10/07/nc-…

As this video was going viral this week I was writing about Robinson, Cawthorn and Walker attending and speaking at an event for The American Renewal Project.

ncpolicywatch.com/2021/10/07/gop…

This group, like Robinson, rejects a separation between church and state, uses religious war language, is strongly anti-LGBTQ and believes its conservative interpretation of Christian scripture should be taught in public schools.

The group and its affiliates also have some pretty scary things to say about Muslims, secular people in general and the idea that their idea of Christian values should be at the heart of schools and governments that have to teach and represent all people in American society.

This next bit is important, so stay with me here. I want you to read this group's sentiments and goals in the words of its founder, in some detail. It's worth the read.

ARP founder David Lane, in his own words:

“Can you picture what America would look like following a decade-long war – a knock-down drag-out – to return God, prayer and the Bible to the public schools?To regain our Christian heritage and re-establish a Christian culture?”

Lane goes further:

“One of these days some nobody – yet conversant and skilled in the Word – will call for religious liberty by reintroducing the Bible, Jesus, the Ten Commandments and honoring God at commencements in the public schools of America."

To those who disagree?

“The message to our federal representatives and senators? Vote to restore the Bible and prayer in public schools or be sent home. Hanging political scalps on the wall is the only love language politicians can hear.”

And what happens after that? Lane goes on:

“Then we will watch Providence call for ‘punishment executed by angels’ to those who oppose His Word.”

So, to sum up: His fundamentalist version of Christianity should be central to American life and must be taught in public schools. Any political leader who opposes this should be voted out. Once they've accomplished this, "those who oppose His word" will be punished.

The NC Lt. Governor has been headlining private pastor events for this group all year long and will continue to do so throughout the year, across the state. Walker and Cawthorn were happy to join them as guest speaker in Asheville this week.

One of the group's primary goals? Get pastors who are on their political and religious page to run for office and help them carry out their religious vision in public policy.

I've been writing about this for years. Did so when Robinson's predecessor, Dan Forest headlined an event for ARP in 2019.

If you think the above is disconcerting, go read some fo the stuff in this piece.

ncpolicywatch.com/2019/09/05/dan…

The group Right Wing Watch made Robinson's LGBTQ "filth" comments viral by posting the clip from June on Twitter and letting it do its thing. Democrats have called for his resignation. The White House is condemning the remarks. Elected Republicans are largely silent.

Sadly, this isn't new. Robinson has been saying this and worse since well before he was elected. He's on tape saying it. About LGBTQ people. About Jews. Anybody on the political left. The result's always the same: Outrage on the left, relative silence on the right.

My old newsroom colleague Travis Fain, now at WRAL, has been documenting this in various ways for years.

So have many other reporters. It's out in the open. It has been.

I reached out to Robinson for my most recent story. No reply.

But I did get a response from Mark Walker.

Now, Walker and I go back a ways.

When I was a daily newspaper reporter in Greensboro I followed his first congressional campaign, when he was a relatively former music minister at a local Baptist church in a crowed GOP primary few thought he could win.

But I did.

After spending some time with him, seeing him speak in churches large and small, in tiny diners and hastily thrown together campaign events off dirt roads without street signs I was sure of it.

And I knew he'd trounce the Democrat in the general.

Walker has had his own history with embarrassing videos going viral. I wrote about some of them in a column back when he was getting started.

My sentiments about him then? Still pretty dead-on. As they say...we don't get older, we just get moreso.

greensboro.com/news/state/wil…

So nothing could have surprised me less than getting a mostly friendly but lightly chiding e-mail from Walker shortly after my story on him and ARP ran this week.

He used to call me up at my newsroom desk in the same way. We've had these talks over burritos a couple of times.

In his e-mail, Walker didn't address any of the concerns about ARP, anti-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim sentiments. He didn't address concerns about church and state or David Lane's view that government and public schools should be operated along fundamentalist Christian lines.

Neither did he get into Robinson's most recent viral video blow-up, which was all over the news by the time he wrote to me.

You can be sure I asked him -- and if he should get back to me on it, I'll let you know.

What *did* he say? Read for yourself.

Some of this is going to require a little context.

Did I bring up Walker going after Bruce Springsteen in a 2016 after The Boss cancelled a concert in my hometown of Greensboro over HB2? Yes.

Did Walker’s comments to The Hollywood Reporter reflect his “main beef” of vendors and small businesses taking a hit when Springsteen pulled out two days before the show? Not even a little bit. There’s literally not a single reference to that in the piece.

What did Walker say? Springsteen is on the “radical left.” He’s a “a bully.” He doesn’t understand the issues. He has such a “lack of discernment” that he performed “Fortunate Son” - which Walker called a draft-dodging song - at an event for veterans.

I’ve been giving Walker shit for this particular thing for years. Here’s a short piece I wrote about it when it happened.

I’m not likely to stop any time soon. Why? Because it is *so* illustrative of what I think is a fundamental part of Walker’s political personality.

He said a bonehead thing. He said it in a bonehead way. That’s fine. It happens. I say bonehead things all the time. I even say fairly smart things in boneheaded ways.

When I do it, I try to apologize and make amends as I can, to learn from my mistake and try not to make it again. Walker’s made nods toward this approach himself.

But he’s never actually apologized for his Springsteen comments -- which went well beyond the political issue at hand in an extraneous and flamboyant way. And he doesn’t appear to have learned much from the episode.

Am I a Bruce Springsteen fan? Oh, you bet your ass.

But that’s not what this is about. Walker could have said, “‘‘Human Touch’ and ‘Lucky Town’ both sucked. Should have just made one bad double album so I’d only have to ignore it once.”

I’d have agreed.

He could have said, “The production on some of those 80s albums really gave a whole generation the wrong idea about what Bruce and the E-Street band were all about. Every version of ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ that doesn’t include synth is better.”

I’d have stood up and applauded.

But what he did was call one of the most popular and beloved artists in American music history a radical leftist bully.

Then he blamed him for featuring on country star Zack Brown’s performance of “Fortunate Son” -- which was written by Army vet John Fogerty and is beloved by veterans like my father and every Marines I grew up with.

It was a dumb, cheap and ultimately non-sensical shot at someone he perceived as a political opponent. It didn’t engage on the actual issue and it didn’t represent what he now says was his chief concern -- the economic damage to businesses caught in the political crossfire.

Why that was his chief concern in the HB2 fight while I was literally interviewing young gay, lesbian and transgender people who were getting death threats and were afraid to go to school, because of the anti-LGBTQ fervor whipped up by the bill? Well, that’s politics for you.

The Springsteen incident was a small thing, ultimately. But it was beneath the kind of politics Walker described to me as wanting to be part of, should he be elected, when we were talking in little churches on the campaign trail and over burritos in our shared hometown.

I can’t imagine it’s what he thought he got into public service to do. And there’s just *so much of it.*

They say you campaign in poetry and you govern in prose. And that’s true. You have to live with it. But campaigning in chants and governing in hurled fistfuls of cafeteria food? That’s a choice.

Five years ago this week Mark Walker did something that surprised me. He does that sometimes.

In the wake of then-candidate Donald Trumps “Grab them by the p*ssy” tape, Walker took to social media to condemn these remarks and say America deserved better.

He had a wife, he said. He had a daughter. He’d feel like a hypocrite not standing up and saying something he said.

I was proud of Walker that day. Leave aside how close to, solicitous of and defensive about Trump he would ultimately become. On that day, he did the right thing.

It was not, as some said, the least he could do. The least he could do would have been nothing. There were plenty of people in his party who demonstrated that.

So here’s what I’m wondering now. Mark Walker’s done in Congress. He says he wants to be a U.S. Senator. He says wants to represent all North Carolinians - including me and my LGBTQ friends and family.

So where is his comment on Mark Robinson calling those people filth? Saying they shouldn’t be discussed in schools? This doesn’t concern his wife or his daughter. But he’s told me he knows and is friends with gay people. Surely some of them would like to hear his voice on this.

Walker tells me he doesn’t think it’s fair to lump him in as just another conservative firebrand. There’s more to him than that. He’s not a racist, for instance. Hell, he’s marched with John Lewis. He’s friends with Black pastors from across the political spectrum.

Yeah, I know that. You told me that in your first campaign. You’ve made it a central point of campaign materials since. And as far as I’m aware, I’ve never suggested you might be a racist.

I am suggesting that when you pose for smiling pictures next to people who say degrading and dehumanizing things about LGBTQ people, when you speak to and lend legitimacy to groups that do so, when you are silent in the face of it, it is difficult not to lump you in with them.

I keep thinking about this moment between me and Walker, during his first campaign, when he'd slipped up and done something stupid and wanted me to understand it wasn't who he was.

He put a hand on my shoulder and looked at me with this humble, pained expression.

"Joe, I think you know me and what's in my heart," he said.

I don't know if a reporter can ever really know someone and what's in their heart after a few days or weeks covering them on a political campaign. I don't know if he actually thought that, either.

But I know he wanted me to believe it. I think he still does.

But priests and nuns taught me something about what's in your heart when I was a young boy in Catholic school.

It has to be shown in your word and in your works.