LAS VEGAS (WGHP) — Just over a month after being announced as a guest at a convention that has been described as a conspiratorial roadshow, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign says he will not be in attendance.
On June 21, founder Clay Clark tweeted that Mark Robinson would be attending the August 25-26 stop of his ReAwaken America tour, where Clark and Mike Flynn tour around the country with a rotating cast of guests that often include figures like Eric Trump, Roger Stone, Roseanne Barr and Alex Jones.
At the time, FOX8 reached out to Robinson’s campaign for comment but did not hear back.
A poster depicting the various figures connected with these conventions showed Mark Robinson front-and-center among other high-profile guests. Since then, however, the poster has been updated to include a small caption that reads “Now invited: Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson” beneath his picture.
FOX8 reached out for comment on this change, and Michael Lonergan, the communications director for Robinson’s campaign, said, “The Lt. Governor will not be attending this event.”
The initial announcement tweet on Clay Clark’s Twitter remains pinned to the top of his account, and no retraction tweet has been made as of Thursday.
When asked who would be speaking at this Las Vegas ReAwaken America tour stop, a representative for the tour said over the phone that the speaker list would not be finalized until around a week prior to the event.
Why?
The Robinson campaign did not offer any further insight into why the lieutenant governor was not attending this event, which the ADL has described as “a series of controversial far-right conferences held across the United States featuring prominent QAnon influencers, anti-vaccination activists, election fraud conspiracy theorists, Christian pastors, political candidates and elected officials.”
The event is not dissimilar to other out-of-state engagements Robinson has attended in recent months, including the “Faith Over Fear” rally helmed by right-wing activists accused of election denial and the Moms for Liberty “Joyful Warriors” summit last month, where he came under fire for comments about Hitler that his campaign said were taken out of context. Moms for Liberty was designated as an extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center just a week prior to their summit, at which Robinson took jabs during his speech.
ReAwaken America
The ReAwaken America Tour, founded in 2021 by Clark, advertises itself as “The Great Reawakening vs. The Great Reset.” Its poster features pictures of Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, philanthropist George Soros, former President Barack Obama, Facebook co-founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates among others set next to the words “The Great Reset” and emblazoned with a snake.
Clark writes on the website, “The reason I started the ReAwaken America Tour and TimeToFreeAmerica.com is I felt called by God to expose ‘The COVID-19 / Great Reset’ agenda being pushed by Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, George Soros, China, and other elite globalists that hate God and America. The ReAwaken America Tour exists to expose the election fraud, medical fraud, religious fraud, monetary fraud and mainstream media fraud that has been used to push the ‘COVID-19 Great Reset Agenda.’ Our call to action is to get people back to God because I believe that true repentance and salvation is needed to save this nation.”
The term “globalists” is associated both with globalization, a term used to describe the increasing interconnectedness of global economies and culture, as well as the conspiracy theory that there is a one-world government controlled by a shadowy group of elites called the “New World Order.” This is a conspiracy often promoted on InfoWars by ReAwaken America Tour guest Alex Jones.
The Great Reset was a series of economic proposals put forward by the World Economic Forum as an idea for post-pandemic economic recovery. Schwab is quoted as saying that the pandemic represented a “rare but narrow” window of opportunity to “reflect, reimagine and reset” in order to create a more prosperous future. According to BBC, however, people latched onto the vague proposal as part of a larger conspiracy, alleging that “lockdown restrictions were introduced not to curb the spread of the virus, but to deliberately bring about economic collapse and a socialist world government, albeit run for the benefit of powerful capitalists.”
While the ADL and NPR describe the rally as having strong ties to QAnon, the website for the tour does not feature any explicit reference to QAnon or overt QAnon vernacular such as “the storm” or catchphrases like “where we go one, we go all.” However, attendees and certain guests have promoted the conspiracy, and Clay retweeted a video about “adrenochrome” on his Twitter the same day he announced Robinson’s attendance at the tour. The video features actor Jim Caviezel, who has appeared via video call at ReAwaken America events before, and Steve Bannon on his podcast War Room. In the video, the “Sound of Freedom” actor discusses the QAnon belief that there are “elites” that harvest the chemical adrenochrome from children to use in rituals.
The website also contains language about a “Great Awakening.” While historically “The Great Awakening” is a phrase that has been used to describe periods of American Christian revival, it is also a phrase commonly used by QAnon, describing a time in which they believe the masses will “wake up” to their beliefs and rise up against the shadowy cabal.
