Trump’s Toxic Culture

Is it like an abusive relationship?

I just read a piece in the Washington Post about a man running for Govenor of North Carolina — Mark Robinson — who repeatedly makes statements downplaying and making light of sexual abuse and domestic violence. He questions the credibility of women who made statements against Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and Brett Kavanaugh. The Republican Govenors’ Association has put their full weight behind this man, he is running neck and neck with his competitor. Trump has called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

Robinson has written and posted a lot over the years about a 2014 domestic violence encounter involving then-NFL star Ray Rice, who was seen on a surveillance video dragging his apparently unconscious fiancée Janay out of an elevator. In a post directed Janay, Robinson suggested the woman was at fault for the physical altercation.

“I’m a 350lb man but aint no way in HELL I’m gonna’ slap no pro football player,” Robinson wrote on Facebook. “I’m to old for an a$$whoopin’.”

When it happened, there was a lot of coverage and much discussion about the incident, and it seemed that the culture was going to forgive him. The NFL suspended him, and he successfully appealed that decision, but his career never recovered from the incident. To his credit, even though Rice was the…