The newly unearthed remarks were made in the comments of a news article under a username that previous reporting has linked to Mr. Robinson, the Republican running for governor in North Carolina.
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The Rev. Al Sharpton speaking at the Democratic National Convention in August. Mr. Sharpton on Wednesday expressed concern that the newly unearthed comments from North Carolina’s lieutenant governor could put him in danger.
Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina, the embattled Republican running for governor there, appeared to suggest in an online comment in 2009 that police officers should have shot the Rev. Al Sharpton, according to a report published on Wednesday by the conservative news site The Bulwark.
“If the cops wanted to shoot an elderly black man they should have shot Al Sharpton,” wrote a person with the username minisoldr in the comments section of a news article, according to the report. The same username was linked to Mr. Robinson in an initial CNN report that has rocked his campaign.
The New York Times was not able to immediately independently verify the post, which The Bulwark said was posted on the website of NewsOne, which is focused on Black Americans. Those comments and others under the same username were uncovered through a digital archive, The Bulwark reported.
Mr. Robinson’s campaign did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
He has denied making the comments reported last week by CNN, which said that he had once called himself a “black NAZI” and defended slavery as “not bad” on an online pornographic forum. The same report also said he had viciously attacked another civil-rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr.
He has sought to press on with his campaign, even after most of his campaign’s senior staff members resigned on Sunday.
At a campaign stop on Monday, Mr. Robinson denounced the CNN article and said he would take the news organization “to task for what they have done to us.”
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Source: nytimes.com
