As outrage continues over a CNN report on North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson’s previous inflammatory comments on a pornography website, his main Republican campaigner, Donald Trump, has been conspicuously silent on the issue.
CNN’s shocking coverage on Thursday shocked Robinson’s fellow Republicans and threatens to further derail his faltering bid for governor. But the Trump campaign appears to be taking a “wait and see” approach to the scandal. Following the report, the campaign issued a statement about the importance of winning the state in November, but it did not go into the juicy details or mention Robinson.
According to CNN, between 2008 and 2012, Robinson posted comments on a pornography website message board in which he called himself a “black Nazi,” called for the return of slavery and recalled “peeping” on women in the gym showers as a teenager, among other details. Robinson himself has said the posts were not his and suggested they were fake. He has vowed not to retire from the race.
Although The Associated Press reported that Robinson will no longer appear with Trump at his rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Saturday, the campaign has not disavowed Robinson. Brian Hughes, a senior campaign adviser to Trump, denied reports that the campaign pressured Robinson to leave the race, and Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told NBC News that Trump is not considering withdrawing his support from the beleaguered gubernatorial candidate.
Trump’s running mate has also refused to address the controversy. On Friday, in response to a video of Sen. J.D. Vance walking past a reporter who asked about Robinson, Vance wrote on X: “My comment on Mark Robinson is that Kamala Harris cast the deciding vote on the Inflation Explosion Act and many Americans can’t afford groceries because of it.”
It may be difficult for Trump to disavow Robinson now, given the praise he has heaped on the gubernatorial candidate in the past. Despite Robinson’s history of anti-trans, anti-gay, anti-abortion and anti-Semitic rhetoric, Trump has spoken highly of Robinson, endorsing him as “better than Martin Luther King [Jr.]”and called him an “exceptional person.”
“I got to know him so well,” Trump said of Robinson in December.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
