Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, Donald Trump, and lt. gubernatorial candidate Hal Weatherman pose for a photo over the Memorial Day weekend. (Photo: @HalWeathermanNC account on X.com)
Former President Donald Trump made no mention of North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson during his appearance at a rally in Wilmington on Saturday, but the controversy surrounding CNN’s Thursday bombshell report on Robinson continued to dominate political discussions across the state.
Trump instead used the event to decline an offer to debate Vice President Kamala Harris on CNN on October 23 and to deliver a familiar set of rambling and frequently false and outlandish remarks blasting the Biden-Harris administration and promising an almost instant national transformation if he is elected. He said that if he wins in November, the “borders would be instantly secured,” the “price of household goods will plummet,” energy prices will be cut by half in one year, homeless encampments “will be gone,” and “world peace” would prevail. He falsely stated that every job created in the U.S. in recent years had gone to a migrant worker.
He also repeatedly referred to the Vice President as “Comrade Harris,” and averred that if she wins, “40-50 million illegal aliens” will be in the nation “stealing your money,” while a Harris administration will “confiscate all guns,” seek to pack the Supreme Court with 25 justices, and “kill the American dream forever.”
Robinson, who was not at the Trump event, was scheduled to appear at a meet-and-greet at Fayetteville Motor Speedway at 6 p.m. Saturday, according to a post on the venue’s Facebook page. Trump did highlight the presence of other GOP politicians on Saturday, including Senator Ted Budd and Congressmen Dan Bishop and David Rouzer.
According to the CNN investigation, Robinson referred to himself as a “black NAZI,” a “perv” and said “slavery is not bad” in messages posted on a pornography website more than a decade ago before the start of his political career.
CNN also reported that Robinson, who has repeatedly made statements hostile to transgender people, wrote that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography. He also said that he enjoyed “peeping” on women in public gym showers when he was 14 years old.
On Friday, Politico reported that an email address belonging to Robinson was registered on Ashley Madison, a website designed for married people seeking affairs and that “an adviser to Robinson, granted anonymity to speak freely, confirmed to POLITICO that the email address in question belongs to Robinson.”
As with the CNN story, an official spokesperson for the Robinson campaign denied the report.
It was the second time in four days that Robinson was unmentioned and absent from a major GOP rally – he was a no-show at vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s rally in Raleigh on Wednesday.
The scandal surrounding Robinson, who Trump has previously and enthusiastically endorsed and repeatedly and favorably compared to the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., served to focus an extra measure of national attention on Saturday’s event.
Though Robinson was already badly trailing his Democratic opponent, state Attorney General Josh Stein, in numerous statewide polls prior to this week’s revelations, the new reports have led some experts to opine that a freefall for his campaign could lead to a “reverse coattails effect” for Trump and help deliver the state and its 16 electoral votes to Harris. Recent polls in the presidential race indicate that Harris and Trump are in a virtual tie in North Carolina and that a shift of even a relatively small segment of voters could prove fatal to the Trump campaign’ hopes in the state.
As Washinton Post senior political writer Aaron Blake explained in a Friday analysis, Robinson’s favorability numbers were “awful” well before this past week and he is easily linked to Trump. Indeed, as NC Newsline reported yesterday, the Harris campaign has already launched a multimedia campaign to do precisely that.
This is from Blake’ analysis:
“What sorts of Trump voters might this turn off? Trump has maintained his political stature over the years despite his own mounds of baggage. But it’s not as if all his supporters are true-believer MAGA types. He also relies on more traditional Republicans who don’t love him but support the team. (Recall that during the GOP primaries, as many as 1 in 5 voters continued voting against him even after Nikki Haley dropped out.)”
According to Blake, Robinson’s continued presence on the scene – he missed the state’s deadline for withdrawing from the race and has vowed to stay in – “could bolster the Harris campaign’s strategy of promising to turn the page on the chaos and extremism of the past nine years”
“It might not be enough to get Democrats over the line in a stubborn state they’ve won just once since 1976 (in 2008), but it surely doesn’t hurt. And if it does help them tip the state and snatch its 16 electoral votes, that would severely hamper Trump’s path to victory.”