Donald Trump referred to Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, as a “Martin Luther King on steroids.” Robinson, however, defined himself as a “black Nazi,” according to an investigation by CNN, which has followed the trail of his messages on an internet porn forum, in which he also advocated reinstating slavery. The candidate, 56 years old, has denied this, but without providing any explanation that would disprove the evidence provided by the news network. The scandal over Robinson’s comments could erode support for the Republicans and in particular for Trump, their great supporter, in one of the decisive states in the presidential elections on November 5. For now, the former president has banned his presence at the rally he is giving this Saturday there, in North Carolina.
The comments, which Robinson denies making, were made between 2008 and 2012, before he entered politics and his current stint as state lieutenant governor, a position he has held since 2021. They were made on Nude Africa, a pornographic website that includes a message board. The comments were made under the username minisoldr, a nickname Robinson frequently used online, evidence provided by CNN shows. Robinson listed his full name on his Nude Africa profile, as well as an email address he used on numerous online websites over the decades, CNN has learned.
Many of the comments Robinson wrote on the porn site were sexual and lewd, so CNN has chosen to report only a small portion of the Trump candidate’s posts on the website, given their explicit nature. Despite his recent history of transphobia, Robinson said in his posts that he enjoyed watching trans pornography. “I like watching trans porn with girls! It’s so fucking hot!” Robinson wrote. “And yes, I’m a pervert too!” he added.
Robinson also explicitly described his own sexual arousal — which CNN has chosen not to reproduce — stemming from a memory of secretly “spying” on women in public gym showers when he was 14. Robinson recounted the story as a memory he said he still fantasized about. “I came to a place that was a dead end, but it had two big vent covers over it! It led to the showers. I sat there for an hour and watched several girls go in and shower,” Robinson wrote in Nude Africa, adding other sexual details. “I spied again the next morning,” Robinson wrote. “But after that I came back and the stairwell was locked! So those two times were the only time I got to do it. Ahhhh, memories!!!!” he added.
CNN says it first contacted Robinson’s campaign on Tuesday morning with evidence linking him to the Nude Africa comments. It took two days for his campaign to respond and deny the claims. “This is not us. These are not our words. And this is nothing that characterizes me,” Robinson said in an interview with the network on Thursday. Faced with evidence linking him to the minisoldr username on Nude Africa, he dodged the question: “I’m not going to get into the minutiae of how someone fabricated this, these sensational lies.” Robinson says he is not withdrawing from the gubernatorial race. The deadline to replace him as a candidate expired at midnight Thursday.
The candidate also released a video through his campaign denying the events shortly before CNN published the story, but again without refuting the evidence provided. “Let me assure you that the things you will see in that story are not the words of Mark Robinson. You know my words. You know my character,” he said in the video.
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Robinson has been criticized for calling for a total ban on abortion with no exceptions in his 2020 lieutenant governor campaign, but he paid for his current wife’s abortion in the 1980s, a decision he later expressed regret for. In his porn forum posts, he also downplays the importance of a celebrity’s abortion: “I don’t care. I just want to see the sex tape.”
The Assembly, A North Carolina online publication reported earlier this week that Robinson frequented local pornographic video stores in the 1990s and 2000s. The story cited six people who had contact with him and who saw him frequenting the Greensboro, North Carolina, stores. A spokesman for Robinson called the story false and “complete fiction” to the outlet.
North Carolina is one of seven states that will decide the presidential election on November 5. It is the only one of them that Trump won in 2020, but he did so by a narrow margin and the polls have been very close since Kamala Harris came on the scene as a candidate. It has 16 votes in the Electoral College, the same as Georgia and only behind Pennsylvania’s 19 among the key states. If Harris wins in that state, she has more options to add the 270 electoral votes required.
Trump is now trying to distance himself from Robinson, but the Democrats are not going to let him do it so easily. Harris’ campaign has launched an ad to highlight the ties between the two. In the images, they are seen together and Trump praises him endlessly. He says that he is an “incredible” lieutenant governor. Then, he doubles down: “I think you are better than Martin Luther King,” the charismatic activist in favor of civil rights for African Americans assassinated in 1968. And in another clip, the former president is seen at a fundraiser for Robinson at Mar-a-Lago, his mansion in Palm Beach (Florida): “I have been with him a lot. I have gotten to know him and he is outstanding,” he says.