WASHINGTON — Republican Party candidate for governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, has had it hard since Thursday’s CNN report raised evidence that he years of disturbing comments on a forum on a porn website, including references to himself as “a black Nazi” and descriptions of becoming sexually aroused by spying on girls in public showers.
Robinson has refused the accuracy of the CNN story, calling it “false lies,” though in the same breath he suggested that those comments on the porn sites might were his anyway.
But last week, the North Carolina Republican described himself quite differently, even comparing himself to “people in the Bible.”
A few days before the shocking story broke, Robinson, currently the state’s lieutenant governor, was in a North Carolina church telling people that God was working through biblical figures like Israel’s King David. He then put himself in the same category as them.
“The one thing that always encourages me is studying the people in the Bible,” Robinson said in his Sept. 15 address at First Baptist Church Of Indian Trail.
“It doesn’t matter if they were hand-picked like David or if they were thrust into situations, they weren’t perfect people,” he said. “But they were the perfect people for God to use at that time. And he worked with them where they were, and that’s what God does with me.”
The GOP candidate for governor added that because God is working with him, he is trying to “be convinced of the things I’m doing wrong.”
A spokesman for Robinson’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The First Baptist Church Of Indian Trail previously posted a video of Robinson’s comments on its Facebook page, but the video has since been removed.
American Bridge, a Democratic research group, was able to extract a clip from the video before it was taken down. You can watch it here:
The rhetoric Robinson used in his church speech—the idea that he is not perfect, but that God works through imperfect people—is language used by Republicans and right-wing evangelicals. used for years to justify their support for former President Donald Trump, a twice-convicted felon and sexual abuser.
They have specifically, and wronglycompared Trump to King David, just as Robinson did to himself.
Eight of Robinson’s campaign staffers resigned en masse after CNN’s report on his apparent comments came out. Raleigh outlet WRAL News reported on monday that a likely reason they stopped is that Robinson refused multiple offers from supporters to put him in touch with technical specialists who could investigate how his username appeared on the porn site. Apparently, Robinson sowed doubt among his staff that the messages were not from him when he saw Robinson rejecting these offers.
As shocking as the CNN report’s findings were, the North Carolina Republican has a long history of making sexist, racist, Islamophobic, transphobic And otherwise disgusting comments.
He has also made many ugly posts on social media under his own name, which he does not deny, especially from before he was a public figure. Some of them have certainly not aged well.
In one Facebook post from 2015Robinson appears to claim moral high ground as he rails against people who engage in “perversion” — the same activity he claims to enjoy in the porn site forum posts exposed by CNN.
CNN provides specific evidence that Robinson called himself a ‘pervert’ who enjoys pornography featuring transgender people – a stark contrast to his current transphobic rhetoric calling for trans women to be arrested for the use of ladies’ toilets.
“The TRUTH hurts,” he wrote earlier on Facebook. “We sow seeds of violence, hatred and perversion and then wonder why we reap a harvest of violence, hatred and perversion.”
Robinson is running for governor against Democrat Josh Stein, who is currently North Carolina’s attorney general. Stein was already leading in the pollsbut since the CNN story came out, his prediction has only improved. The Cook Political Report on Friday his prediction shifted for this gubernatorial race from “Leaning Democrat” to “Likely Democrat.”
