North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in that state, denied the allegations in a CNN article published Thursday, alleging that he had posted numerous explicit comments on a pornography site’s message board.
“Let me reassure you,” Robinson said in a video posted on social media before the publication of the CNN article: “the things you’re going to see in that story are not the words of Mark Robinson.”
The words in question were posted on the message board of the porn website Nude Africa between 2008 and 2012, before Robinson held elected office, under the username “minisoldr.” Robinson reportedly used that name on several other websites, CNN reported.
According to CNN, Robinson described himself under that screen name as a “black Nazi!”
Robinson has been outspoken about his opposition to transgender rights. But one of the many comments discovered by CNN showed that one of the comments left by minisoldr talked about being turned on by watching transgender porn.
“I love watching tranny on girl porn! It’s f***ing hot! It takes the man outside while the man stays inside!” Robinson wrote, according to CNN. “And yes, I’m a ‘pervert’ too!”
In his statement Thursday, Robinson dismissed the story as politically motivated and compared the allegations to those about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
“Folks, this race right now, our opponents are desperate to shift the focus away from the substantive issues and focus on what you care about and onto the salacious tabloid tabloids,” Robinson said, adding, “And folks, we’ve seen this kind of thing in the past. Clarence Thomas once said he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. Well, it looks like Mark Robinson is.”
But Robinson may not dodge the allegations against him in the same way that Thomas did when he was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice in 1991.
In a story published earlier this month by The Assembly, former employees and customers of porn shops in Greensboro, N.C., came forward to tell how Robinson was a frequent visitor to those establishments. Robinson campaign spokesman Mike Lonergan called their accounts “bulls***.”
Robinson, who is trailing Democratic opponent Josh Stein in the polls, has already come under scrutiny for his inflammatory rhetoric. In 2021, Robinson gave a speech criticizing Affirmative Action programs, saying that Black people were actually the ones to blame.
“If you want to tell the truth, YOU are the one to blame!” he told his audience.
He has cast doubt on the Holocaust, which killed more than 6 million Jews in Europe, calling it “nonsense” and has called the LGBTQ+ community “filth.”
In 2020, he declared his support for a total ban on abortion, with no exceptions for the life of the mother, but in 2022 he expressed regret for having paid his own wife to have an abortion in the 1980s.
An email address belonging to Robinson was also registered with Ashley Madison, an adult website for those seeking extramarital affairs, Politico reported Thursday. One of Robinson’s advisers, who requested anonymity for the publication, confirmed that the email address belonged to the lieutenant governor.
While former President Donald Trump has supported Robinson’s bid for governor, other Republicans worry that he is almost certain to lose in November and that his presence on the ballot could tilt the state in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Thursday is also the deadline for a candidate to withdraw from the election.
