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Republican congressman and North Carolina attorney general candidate Dan Bishop was a warm-up speaker for GOP vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance last Monday in Charlotte.
Bishop talked about how, in his view, Democrats and the media have unfairly wielded power to attack the GOP.
“For almost a decade, Democrats nationally have abused investigative and prosecutorial power to destroy President Trump and his family — egged on by a complicit media,” he said.
He continued: “In the name of democracy, Democrats used state power to suppress Hunter Biden’s laptop, to admit 10 million illegal aliens to swamp our communities. They lied in unison about Biden’s competency, conducted a soft coup when the lie was exposed and proclaimed a nominee who never received a vote.”
It was very on-brand for Bishop, who often rails on social media and in speeches about what he views as Democratic “lawfare” against Trump, as well as Big Tech wielding too much power over what Americans see and hear.
And while this is gospel among many Republicans, some Democrats have also recently hit similar notes.
Former New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for instance, questioned whether the hush money case against Trump should have ever been brought. Some progressive media outlets have questioned whether the media was aggressive enough in writing about Biden’s mental decline. Mark Zuckerberg now regrets his role in downplaying the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election, as well as censoring controversial COVID-19 content.
But Bishop then immediately pivoted to more controversial terrain.
“And last week in North Carolina …”
My head snapped to attention.
He wasn’t going to talk about Mark Robinson — who other Republicans were avoiding like radioactive waste — was he?
He was. He did.
“And last week in North Carolina, Democrats and allied media rolled out a meticulously-timed, coordinated character assassination and immediately sent mailings, ads, broadcasts and posts smearing all Republicans by association while claiming the high ground.”
He was referring to the CNN story four days earlier that linked Robinson to numerous highly offensive posts made on a forum for the pornographic website Nude Africa. Robinson allegedly called himself a “black NAZI” and defended slavery. X (formerly Twitter) users found extremely graphic accounts of having sex with his sister-in-law also allegedly written by the same, now infamous, “minisoldr” account. Robinson, CNN reported, reminisced about being a peeping Tom as a teenager, and said he enjoyed transgender pornography (though he has repeatedly disparaged the LGBT community).
What’s odd about Bishop’s message on Robinson is not just that he’s one of the few Republicans defending him, or at least attacking the messenger.
It’s that Bishop did something very similar six years ago.
In the 2018 midterms, he was running for reelection for his Mecklenburg state Senate seat. Remember, this was the “Blue Wave” election in which many Mecklenburg Republicans would be swept out of office, including Republican House members Bill Brawley, Andy Dulin, Scott Stone and John Bradford.
It was a perilous time to be a Charlotte-area Republican.
Bishop dug deep, and he and Republicans launched a blistering negative campaign against his Democratic opponent.
They cited Bishop’s opponent's DUI arrest a decade before, and then mined online message boards (sound familiar?) to cite posts his opponent made in online chatrooms around 2015 saying that he often drove drunk and that texting and driving was more dangerous.
Bishop won reelection.
- If that kind of online troll-posting was disqualifying (in Bishop’s eyes) to serve as a state senator, then isn’t it reasonable to wonder whether it’s also disqualifying to post that the moral of a story about an alleged sexual assault is to “Don’t f**k a white b*tch?” Or allegedly disqualifying to post: “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring [slavery] back. I would certainly buy a few”?
- As for the CNN story being “meticulously timed,” it’s unclear when the network first got the tip about the posts, or perhaps whether it discovered them on its own.
But isn’t it reasonable to run stories about candidates during election season — and for opposing campaigns to seize on them? After all, Bishop’s negative ads against his 2018 opponent were also “meticulously timed” to arrive about the time people started casting ballots.
- Bishop alleges that CNN and the Democrats worked together on the piece. It’s certainly possible the story originated from Democratic opposition research, but that is common in politics. Republicans do it, too.
- And finally, Bishop said the Democrats engaged in a “coordinated character assassination and immediately sent mailings, ads, broadcasts and posts smearing all Republicans by association while claiming the high ground.”
Bishop objects to being “smeared by association” with Robinson, perhaps because he’s been one of his biggest supporters.
But Bishop himself has attacked his opponents by linking them to prominent members of their party. He did in 2019 when he won his first seat in Congress.
Here’s how the Charlotte Observer described it: In what his campaign calls “a substantial six-figure” cable buy, Bishop has launched an ad called “Clowns.” It opens with him standing next to rocking, inflatable clowns with the faces of Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Dan McCready, the 9th District Democratic candidate. “These crazy liberal clowns,” Bishop says. “The things they say. The way they act. What they believe. They’re not funny. They’re downright scary . . . I’ll go to Washington and fight these clowns for you.”
(Of course, Bishop wasn’t running against Pelosi or Ocasio-Cortez — he was linking them to his opponent, McCready.)
Perhaps the reason Democrats were quick to the draw in linking Republicans to Robinson is simple: The lieutenant governor had already said so many toxic things that was going to be a strategy all along. They had the material all lined up.
Democrat Jeff Jackson, who is running against Bishop for attorney general, quickly assembled a mash-up of the CNN report and Bishop lavishing praise on Robinson in the past.
Bishop’s “Clowns” ad wasn’t out of bounds, and the same goes for Jackson’s quick-hit video. It’s just … politics.
As for “immediately” sending mailings, it’s almost certain those are coming. But Inside Politics hadn’t heard of any that had been sent out before Sept. 20, which would have suggested a coordinated effort with CNN since mailings take longer to print, send and arrive.
Bishop’s comments at last Monday’s rally were similar to those he made about Robinson two days earlier, at a Trump rally in Wilmington.
But a few hours after his Vance speech, Bishop dialed down the heat and repeated the party line that other Republican candidates have been giving about Robinson. In a post on X he wrote:
“I’m focused on winning the Attorney General’s race.
As a matter of law, any decisions about how to proceed in the Governor’s race rest solely with Mark and are between him and the people of North Carolina.”
