Donald Trump is facing calls both from his allies and from within his own campaign to pull his endorsement from scandal-plagued North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
So far, however, there are no plans for the former president to formally drop him.
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On Thursday, CNN reported that Robinson, currently the state’s lieutenant governor, posted a series of offensive comments on the message board of a pornography website called “Nude Africa,” including referring to himself as a “black NAZI!,” saying that he enjoyed watching “tranny” porn and revealing that when he was 14 years old, he spied on women in public gym showers. The comments were allegedly posted between 2008 and 2012, before Robinson was lieutenant governor.
In a statement, the Trump campaign did not directly address the underlying reporting about Robinson, whom the former president endorsed in March and has called “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
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“President Trump’s campaign is focused on winning the White House and saving the country,” Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “North Carolina is a vital part of that plan. We are confident that as voters compare the Trump record of a strong economy, low inflation, a secure border and safe streets, with the failure of Biden-Harris, then President Trump will win the Tarheel State once again.”
On Friday morning, she told NBC News that reports that Trump is considering pulling that endorsement are “false.”
There are pockets of advisers within the Trump campaign who have quietly been urging him to withdraw his endorsement of Robinson, but so far those requests have fallen on deaf ears, according to a campaign official who, like others in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak about the matter freely.
Additionally, Republican members of the North Carolina congressional delegation, including Sens. Ted Budd and Thom Tillis, and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, who is from North Carolina, planned to privately urge Trump to pull his endorsement of Robinson, according to a person familiar with the conversations.
When asked for comment for this story, Budd's office sent over a statement it released on Thursday. In it, the senator called the alleged comments "disgusting."
"Mark Robinson says they are not from him. He needs to prove that to the voters," Budd said.
A spokesperson for Tillis did not return a request for comment.
A person close to the Trump campaign who has been involved in discussions around Robinson said Trump has been going back and forth on the matter and has been in close touch with Whatley, who also did not return a request for comment.
But if Trump does end up pulling his support, it would be a break from what he has done in the past. He rarely backtracks on endorsements publicly because he has long believed doing so would make him look weak — which is a part of the reason he is unlikely to formally withdraw his endorsement of Robinson.
“The problem with it is, while he may feel like that might be a smart move — and I don’t know that he does — there’s no way in hell he’s going to risk the base, which will go furious,” a former senior Trump official said.
The person said Trump might try to thread the needle by not pulling his endorsement but instead issuing a statement “disavowing the actions.”
Robinson will not be attending a Trump rally planned for Saturday in Wilmington, North Carolina, even though in the past, according to a person familiar with the planning of the event, he has been in attendance at past Trump events in the state.
As buzz started to generate Thursday afternoon ahead of CNN publishing its story, Robinson released a video in advance of the news, stating that the words the network was preparing to report were not his.
“You know my words, you know my character, and you know that I have been completely transparent in this race. Clarence Thomas famously once said he was the victim of high-tech lynching. Well, it looks like Mark Robinson is too," he said, comparing himself to the Supreme Court justice, who faced an allegation of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings in 1991.
The CNN story broke on the final day for a candidate to withdraw from the race, meaning that even as the scandal is likely to intensify, Robinson will remain the Republican nominee for governor in the key swing state.
“Robinson could hurt Trump, but it is too late for him to drop now, and if Trump was going to weigh in, he should have done so before the clock struck 12 last night,” said a longtime Republican Senate strategist. “The ads are going to be brutal.”
The Republican Governors Association, which has just two competitive races this election cycle, including Robinson’s, did not return requests seeking comment.
The political fallout from Robinson’s past comments could be particularly tough for Trump because of the importance of North Carolina as one of roughly seven key swing states on the presidential map.
Recent polling has had Trump in a statistical dead heat with Vice President Kamala Harris in the state, at roughly 48%. That outperforms Robinson, who has been polling in the low 40s against Democrat Josh Stein, who has consistently had a lead in the race.
Even before Robinson’s alleged message board comments were unearthed, he was seen as an underdog in his own race and a potential drag on Trump because of past controversial comments. He has called same sex marriage “wickedness,” said women who get abortions are not “responsible enough to keep your skirt down” and mocked the victims of school shootings.
Robinson has also been critical of the transgender community. His past comments faced fresh scrutiny after Thursday’s report, which included remarks Robinson allegedly made on the pornographic message board that he likes “watching tranny on girl porn!”
Robinson has called for transgender women to be arrested over bathroom use.
“If you’re a man on Friday night and all of a sudden on Saturday, you feel like a woman and you want to go in the women’s bathroom in the mall, you will be arrested — or whatever we got to do to you,” he said in February.
Robinson is not the only controversial candidate Trump has stood by.
In 2017, Trump backed the failed Alabama Senate bid of Roy Moore, who had been accused of sexual misconduct with young girls.
During the 2022 midterms, Trump endorsed North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s failed re-election bid after the freshman lawmaker had been embroiled in several scandals — including bringing a loaded handgun to an airport, being eyed by ethics watchdogs over suspicions about possible insider trading related to a meme cryptocurrency, and calling Ukraine’s president a “thug” amid Russia's invasion, among other things.
Trump also stood by Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker in 2022, even after a report that the staunchly anti-abortion candidate had paid for a woman's abortion in 2009.
Jonathan Allen, Dasha Burns, Sahil Kapur, Allan Smith and Jillian Frankel contributed.
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