Both his allies and his own campaign team are calling on Donald Trump to withdraw his support for scandal-plagued North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, four people familiar with the discussions say.

So far, however, there are no plans by the former president to officially drop him.

On Thursday, CNN reported that Robinson, who is currently the state’s lieutenant governor, posted a series of offensive comments on the message board of a porn website called “Nude Africa.” In them, he called himself a “black NAZI!”, said he liked watching “tranny” porn and revealed that he spied on women in public gym showers when he was 14. The comments were allegedly posted between 2008 and 2012, before Robinson became lieutenant governor.

In a statement, the Trump campaign did not directly address the underlying reporting on Robinson, whom the former president endorsed in March and called “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

“President Trump’s campaign is focused on winning the White House and saving the country,” said Karoline Leavitt, his campaign’s press secretary. “North Carolina is an essential part of that plan. We are confident that President Trump will win the Tarheel State again when voters compare Trump’s record of a strong economy, low inflation, a secure border and safe roads with the failure of Biden-Harris.”

On Friday morning, she told NBC News that reports that Trump was considering withdrawing his support were “false.”

There are some advisers on the Trump campaign who have been quietly urging him to withdraw his support for Robinson, but those calls have so far fallen on deaf ears, according to one campaign official who, like others interviewed in this article, was granted anonymity to speak freely about the matter.

In addition, Republican members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation, including Senators Ted Budd and Thom Tillis and North Carolina-born Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, sought to pressure Trump in confidential talks to withdraw his support for Robinson, according to a person familiar with the talks.

Spokespeople for Budd and Tillis did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A person close to Trump’s campaign who was involved in the discussions surrounding Robinson said Trump had been going back and forth on the matter and was in close contact with Whatley, who also did not respond to a request for comment.

But if Trump does withdraw his support, it would be a break from what he has done in the past. He rarely publicly retracts his statements of support because he has long believed doing so would make him look weak – which is one reason he is unlikely to officially withdraw his support for Robinson.

“The problem is that while he may feel that this might be a smart move – and I don’t know if he believes it – there’s no way he’s going to risk the base that would otherwise freak out,” said a former senior Trump official.

The person said Trump could try to get around the bottleneck by not withdrawing his support but instead issuing a statement “distancing the measures.”

Robinson will not attend a Trump rally planned for Saturday in Wilmington, North Carolina, although he has attended previous Trump events in the state in the past, according to a person familiar with the event’s planning.

As the excitement began to build on Thursday afternoon ahead of the CNN article’s publication, Robinson released a video in advance in which he explained that the words the network wanted to report on did not come from him.

“You know my words, you know my character and you know I have been completely transparent in this race. Clarence Thomas once said he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. Well, it looks like Mark Robinson was, too,” he said, comparing himself to the Supreme Court justice who faced allegations of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings in 1991.

The CNN report came on the final day of a candidate withdrawing from the race, meaning that even though the scandal is likely to deepen, Robinson will remain the Republican nominee for governor in this key swing state.

“Robinson could hurt Trump, but it’s too late for him to concede now, and if Trump wanted to get involved, he should have done so before the clock struck 12 last night,” said a longtime Republican Senate strategist. “The ads will be brutal.”

The Republican Governors Association, which has only two contested races this election cycle, including Robinson’s, did not respond to requests seeking comment.

The political consequences of Robinson’s earlier comments could be particularly harsh for Trump, as North Carolina is one of about seven crucial swing states on the presidential election map.

According to recent polls, Trump is statistically tied with Vice President Kamala Harris at around 48 percent, outperforming Robinson, who is polling just above 40 percent, and Democrat Josh Stein, who has consistently led the race.

Even before Robinson’s alleged message board comments came to light, he was considered an outsider in his own race and a potential liability to Trump because of previous controversial comments. He called same-sex marriage “evil,” said women who get abortions were “not responsible enough to keep their skirts down” and mocked victims of school shootings.

Robinson has also been critical of the transgender community. His previous comments have come under renewed scrutiny following Thursday’s report, including alleged remarks Robinson made on the pornographic message board that he “likes to watch tranny porn with girls!”

Robinson called for the arrest of transgender women for using restrooms.

“If you’re a man on Friday night and suddenly on Saturday you feel like a woman and want to go to the ladies’ room at the mall, you’re going to be arrested – or whatever we have to do with you,” he said in February.

Robinson is not the only controversial candidate Trump supports.

In 2017, Trump supported the failed candidacy for the Senate in Alabama of Roy Moore, who was accused of sexually abusing young girls.

In the 2022 midterm elections, Trump supported North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s failed re-election bid after he was embroiled in several scandals – including bringing a loaded handgun into an airport, being scrutinized by ethics committees on suspicion of possible insider trading related to a meme cryptocurrency, and calling the Ukrainian president a “criminal” in light of the Russian invasion, to name a few.

Trump also endorsed Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker in 2022, even after reports emerged that the staunch anti-abortion activist paid for a woman’s abortion in 2009.