WILMINGTON, N.C. — The scandal engulfing Mark Robinson’s campaign for North Carolina governor seems career-ending to many in politics. At Donald Trump’s rally here this weekend, however, plenty of people weren’t bothered.
So what if Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, is linked to a porn site user who once argued for the reinstatement of slavery, detailed an affair with his wife’s sister, called himself a “black NAZI” and praised Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” as “a good read”?
“I didn’t put much credence in it,” Bob Judson, a 70-year-old unaffiliated voter, said of the allegations against Robinson. “We’ve all done things in our past that we’re sorry for. Some of the things are crazy.”
“I mean,” he added, “if we just went on that, we wouldn’t be here for Trump, would we?”
Robinson’s contest has become a remarkable test case of voters and GOP leaders’ tolerance for disturbing allegations against candidates in the Trump era — when news is deeply distrusted, scandals carry less weight and no offense seems to be enough to rattle Trump’s base.
Still, the accusations about Robinson are damaging enough that Trump steered clear of the candidate at his Wilmington, N.C., rally on Saturday, making no mention of his longtime ally days after CNN reported that Robinson made shocking comments on a porn forum more than a decade ago. Some Republican officials, such as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), have said the reporting raises serious concerns if true.
The porn site user matches Robinson’s username on public accounts, lists his name as “mark robinson,” shares the candidate’s biographical details and even uses some of the same distinctive phrases.
But Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, has responded with Trump-like defiance, denying any involvement and railing against “salacious tabloid lies.” The North Carolina GOP followed suit, issuing a statement of support and suggesting the political left is “trying to demonize [Robinson] via personal attacks.” Trump has not denounced Robinson or the comments attributed to him, and the general strategy at Trump’s rally seemed to be to ignore the issue.
On Saturday, Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, dodged answering an NBC reporter on whether he believed Robinson’s claim that the offensive posts weren’t his.
“I don’t not believe him, I don’t believe him — I just think you have to let these things play out sometimes in the court of public opinion,” Vance responded.
Dan Bishop, the Republican nominee for North Carolina attorney general, was the outlier. He spent much of his rally speech denouncing “white supremacist Democrats” from the 1890s before blaming Democrats for the Robinson drama and suggesting, inaccurately, that hacking was required to obtain the porn site posts.
“This week in North Carolina, Democrats suddenly abandoned their aversion to hack and dump, rolled out a meticulously timed and coordinated character assassination, and then moved immediately to smear by association,” Bishop said. “Their aim, they say, is to disgrace not just one but all Republican candidates, in the name of decency, they say.”
Republicans widely expect Robinson to lose in November. He trails his Democratic opponent Josh Stein significantly, and a long record of offensive comments and hard-line stances had already alienated moderate voters.
Trump rallygoer Connie Wittmer said she was willing to look past Robinson’s past controversies — like his comment that women get abortions because they couldn’t keep their “skirt down” — but hesitated when a reporter described the porn site posts. “That disturbs me,” she said. She would have to think about her vote.
Yet the range of reactions to the past week’s bombshells reflect the difficulty of piercing partisan loyalty — and echo years of dismissive responses to controversies around Trump, who won in 2016 despite a recording in which he bragged that he could grab women by their genitals.
Kirk Giles, 50, downplayed the allegations against Robinson as normal male behavior.
“There’s not a man alive that’s never looked at porn or did something stupid on porn because we’re men,” he said at the Wilmington rally. “That’s what men do.” Beside him, his friend Don Bussey said he was still voting for Robinson, too.
A reporter suggested that most men on porn sites don’t praise “Mein Kampf.”
“There’s a lot of men that say some stupid stuff on those porn sites,” Giles said. “The thing is, you say some stupid stuff just to get attention. People strive for attention. There’s attention-seekers out there.”
Others cast doubt on the reporting about Robinson, bolstered by years of Trump and other Republicans decrying “fake news.” Allen Cannon, 70, said he doesn’t trust CNN and noted, “It was 10 years ago.” His wife, 69-year-old Rose Cannon, thought of all the allegations against Trump they believed were unfair.
There was E. Jean Carroll’s allegation that Trump sexually assaulted her in a department store in the 1990s; Trump was found liable for sexual abuse last year in civil court and ordered to pay more than $80 million in damages. “And then all these charges,” Rose Cannon said. “It’s just, I don’t believe all that. I think all that is wrong.”
“When I hear him talk … he’s a very positive, strong man,” she said of Robinson. “Now that this has happened, I don’t know. We’ll hear through it, and see what we think.”
Many of Robinson’s inflammatory comments have been in public view for a long time. Before last week’s revelations, “Mark Robinson was unfit and unqualified to be the governor of North Carolina,” argued Stein, his Democratic opponent and the state’s attorney general, in an interview. The CNN report “simply underlined and put an exclamation point behind that sentence, which we already knew.”
Some Republicans challenged Robinson in the primary, arguing that his baggage made him unelectable. They highlighted Robinson’s comments at a church that “we are called to be led by men” not women, and his screed that the movie “Black Panther” was “created by an agnostic Jew” to “pull the shekels” from Black people’s pockets.
But many GOP voters loved what they called Robinson’s brashness and brushed the criticisms aside. Trump signaled his support for Robinson early in the race, and ultimately endorsed him.
Now, Robinson’s critics say there’s reason to be cynical about the impact of even the most outrageous stories.
“In this day and age, you’re kind of like, ‘Oh, a terrible news story?’” said Rich Smith, a 34-year-old Democrat from Wilmington. “They’ll just says it’s fake news, and move on from there. And nothing will change.”
