Welfare-bashing MAGA candidate's political rise 'wouldn’t have been possible without it'

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, now running for governor on a platform that includes blasting social programs as a “plantation of welfare and victimhood” that creates "dependency" for Black people, actually owed his own personal and political fortunes to profiting off these programs in the first place.

According to the Associated Press, "Over the past decade, Robinson’s household has relied on income from Balanced Nutrition Inc., a nonprofit founded by his wife, Yolanda Hill, that administered a free lunch program for North Carolina children. The organization, funded entirely by taxpayers, has collected roughly $7 million in government funding since 2017, while paying out at least $830,000 in salaries to Hill, Robinson and other members of their family, tax filings and state documents show."

Indeed, the report said, Robinson's career "wouldn’t have been possible without it."

"The income offered the Robinsons a degree of stability after decades of struggle that included multiple bankruptcies, home foreclosure and misdemeanor charges — later dropped — for writing bad checks. In Robinson’s telling, the financial turnaround provided by the organization also allowed for his ascent into the North Carolina government," the report continued — noting that Robinson credits the income from these programs for how he was able to quit his job in furniture manufacturing to work in politics.

This also comes after recent reporting that showed Robinson failed to file taxes for five years.

Robinson, a MAGA loyalist whom former President Donald Trump has praised as "Martin Luther King on steroids," was first elected as lieutenant governor in 2020, has a history of extreme and controversial views.

Among other things, Robinson has made anti-Semitic remarks about Jewish writers and the Holocaust, blasted school shooting survivors as "prosti-tots," claimed that music star Beyoncé is a puppet of Satan teaching women how to be "whores," and that America was better off back in the days when women weren't allowed to vote.

Robinson is set to face off against Democratic North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, who is hoping to keep the governor's mansion in Democratic hands with the retirement of sitting Gov. Roy Cooper.