On December 15th, Stewart County Mayor Robin Brandon once again took to his Facebook profile to articulate his feelings and opinions on COVID-19, Trump’s “re-election”, and “satanist Bill Gates”.
On March 22nd, during the onset of the pandemic in our region, Mayor Brandon called for unity stating, “I believe that God has chosen us, as Americans, to stand together to defeat the Chinese corona virus that circulates among us” and advised that the fight against COVID had become “a question of morality”. He called for his constituents to shut down for a week to flatten the curve.
By July 7th, however, Brandon had completely changed course in a 2-hour social media meltdown denouncing everything from Montgomery County Mayor Jim Durrett to “those idiots in BLM“, before threatening to station the Sheriff at the county line banning the entry of vehicles with a license plate that didn’t say Stewart County.
But on December 15th, Brandon’s words perched atop a flowing American flag GIF emblazoned with “GOD BLESS AMERICA” contained new inflammatory elements to include, threatening employees in his own courthouse and calling COVID-19 a “scamdemic”. He even stated as fact that COVID is a “powerful flu, created by a satanist Bill Gates, in a lab in wuhan china, and unleashed on America by China to influence mail-in ballots” before going on to claim that Dr. Fauci stands to gain billions from the vaccine. He also declared Trump re-elected.
Likely fueled by the many supporters in the comments, Mayor Brandon then proceeded to chastise those who disagreed with him. He told one man to “get in the boxcar” and “go back to his “Hilary Clinton fan page” before threatening him in political boss fashion “you would never be elected Commissioner in this County again. Don’t believe me? Try it”.
As of Mayor Brandon’s December 15th post, Stewart County had 723 cases including 5 new from the 14th. December 16th those numbers climbed to 738, tripling the increase of the day prior. While 738 may seem low compared to Montgomery County’s 9,178, Stewart County has a population of around 13,700. This makes the county’s infection rate around .05 while Montgomery’s is closer to .04.
Stewart County Mayor Robin Brandon also disputed the 19 deaths attributed to COVID. He said, “show me 19 confirmed coronavirus deaths in SC” then “You know what I see? I see kids dying from depression and old people dying from old age”. Brandon claimed to have gathered his data from the “funeral home website for the year”.
