Donald Trump is campaigning in North Carolina on Saturday, just two days after CNN’s investigative reporting found that the former president’s gubernatorial candidate in that state, Mark Robinsonleft dozens of disturbing comments on a porn website’s message board over a decade ago.
Robinson, who denied the allegations, will apparently not be present, according to AP sources.
Among other things, Robinson made alarming comments under the username “minisoldr.” For example, he said, without any basis, “I’m a black NAZI!” He also admitted to “spying” on women in public showers at gyms when he was 14, claimed he liked “tranny porn with girls,” and called Muslims “little scoundrels.”
CNN, according to reporters Andrew Kaczynski And In Steckidentified Robinson with the Republican gubernatorial candidate using his email account and “by comparing a litany of biographical details” from the posts.
Robinson, who would be North Carolina’s first black governor if elected, is said to have called Martin Luther King Jr. a “communist scoundrel,” “worse than a maggot,” a “damn bitch, a conman,” and a “crook.”
“I’m not in the Ku Klux Klan. They don’t let blacks join. If I was in the Ku Klux Klan, I would have called him Martin Lucifer Koon!” Robinson reportedly posted, writing elsewhere: “Slavery isn’t bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they’d bring it (slavery) back. I’d definitely buy a few.”
These posts were created over a decade ago, between 2008 and 2012, on “Nude Africa,” a pornographic website.
In the years that followed, Robinson continued to make hateful statements.
In a 2017 Facebook post, Robinson said he was “so sick of still seeing and hearing people talk about the Nazis and Hitler and how evil and manipulative they were” and warned about “the communist” who “has been pushing this Nazi bogeyman narrative all these years.”
The following year, Robinson wrote in another Facebook status: “So if a transitioned woman marries and abuses a transitioned man, is that still ‘violence against a woman’? Are feminists going to riot over this?”
“I want a British cigarette,” he continued.
In 2020, Robinson told attendees at a Republican Women of Pitt County event, “I really want to go back to the America where women weren’t allowed to vote.” (Vanity Fair‘S Bess Levin I have compiled further evidence here.)
For over a year, Trump has been praising the current Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina and enthusiastically supporting him as the state’s head of government.
At the North Carolina Republican Party’s annual convention in June 2023, Trump called Robinson “one of the great stars of the party, one of the great stars of politics.” In December of that year, the former president hosted a fundraiser for him at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
“I think he has a chance to be one of the greatest leaders because I’ve interacted with him a lot, I’ve gotten to know him and he’s outstanding,” Trump said at the event. “He’s tough, he’s smart and he’s got a tremendous heart.”
“This is Martin Luther King on steroids,” Trump said at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, in March of this year. “I told Mark that. I said, ‘I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you’re Martin Luther King times two.'”
It is unclear if and how Trump will mention Robinson in his remarks at Saturday’s campaign rally. According to NBC News on Friday, Trump “has been urged by both his allies and his own campaign to withdraw his support for the scandal-plagued North Carolina gubernatorial candidate,” according to four people familiar with the discussions.
Following CNN’s investigation, the Trump campaign spokeswoman said Caroline Leavitt told the broadcaster: “President Trump’s campaign is focused on winning the White House and saving this country. North Carolina is an essential part of that plan.”
