Donald Trump is campaigning in North Carolina on Saturday, just two days after CNN’s investigative reporting found that the former president’s chosen gubernatorial candidate in the state, Mark Robinson, made dozens of disturbing comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago.
Robinson, who denied the claims, will apparently not be in attendance, according to AP sources.
Among other alarming remarks made under the username “minisoldr,” Robinson said, unprovoked, “I’m a black NAZI!” He also admitted to “peeping” on women in public gym showers as a 14-year-old, claimed to like “tranny on girl porn!,” and referred to Muslims as “little rag-headed bastards.”
CNN, according to reporters Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, identified Robinson by his email account and “by matching a litany of biographical details” from the posts to the Republican gubernatorial nominee.
Robinson, who, if elected, would become North Carolina’s first Black governor, reportedly called Martin Luther King Jr. a “commie bastard,” “worse than a maggot,” a “ho f**king, phony,” and a “huckster.”
“I’m not in the KKK. They don’t let blacks join. If I was in the KKK I would have called him Martin Lucifer Koon!” Robinson reportedly posted, writing in another instance that “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few.”
These posts were made over a decade ago, between 2008 and 2012, on “Nude Africa,” a pornographic website.
In the years that followed, Robinson has repeatedly shared other hateful sentiments.
In a 2017 Facebook post, Robinson said he was “so sick of seeing and hearing people STILL talk about Nazis and Hitler and how evil and manipulative they were” and warned against “The Communist” who “has been pushing this Nazi boogeyman narrative all these years.”
Then, in another Facebook status the next year, Robinson wrote, “So if a woman who ‘transitioned’ into a ‘man’ marries and abuses a man who ‘transitioned’ into a ‘woman’ is it still’ violence against a woman?’ Will the feminist raise hell over it?”
“I’m asking for a British Cigarette,” he continued.
In 2020, Robinson told attendees at a Republican Women of Pitt County event that, “I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote.” (Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin compiled more receipts here.)
For over a year, Trump has lauded the current North Carolina lieutenant governor, enthusiastically endorsing him as the state’s head of government.
At the North Carolina Republican Party’s annual convention in June of 2023, Trump called Robinson “one of the great stars of the party, one of the great stars in politics.” That December, the former president held a fundraiser for him at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate.
“I think he has the chance to be one of the greatest leaders because, I’ve been with him a lot, I’ve gotten to know him, and he’s outstanding,” Trump said at that event. “He’s tough, and he’s smart, and he has tremendous heart.”
“This is Martin Luther King on steroids,” Trump said at a rally in Greensboro, NC, in March of this year. “I told that to Mark. I said, ‘I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two.’”
It’s unclear if or how Trump will refer to Robinson in his rally remarks on Saturday. According to NBC News on Friday, Trump has been “facing calls both from his allies and from within his own campaign to pull his endorsement from scandal-plagued North Carolina gubernatorial candidate,” according to four people familiar with the discussions.
Following CNN’s investigation, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told the network that, “President Trump’s campaign is focused on winning the White House and saving this country. North Carolina is a vital part of that plan.”
