The Republican lieutenant governor said he would hire new staff soon, following a CNN report linking him to disturbing comments on a porn site.
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Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina speaking at a campaign rally for former President Donald J. Trump in Asheville N.C., in August.
Mark Robinson returned to the campaign trail on Monday in North Carolina, insisting that he will remain in the governor’s race even after most of his staff resigned following a CNN report linking him to numerous disturbing comments on a pornographic website.
Wearing his signature bright red shirt and jeans, Mr. Robinson, the state’s Republican lieutenant governor, stood outside a bakery in Wilkesboro, N.C., and denounced the CNN article. Among other things, it said that Mr. Robinson had written on a porn site years ago that he was a “black NAZI,” that he enjoyed watching transgender pornography and that “slavery is not bad.”
Donald J. Trump did not mention Mr. Robinson once at a campaign event in Wilmington, N.C., on Saturday, and several Trump fans who attended said they understood why it was necessary to distance Mr. Trump from Mr. Robinson. The former president endorsed Mr. Robinson in March and held a fund-raiser for at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., last year.
The fallout worsened on Sunday when most of Mr. Robinson’s top campaign staff members resigned, leaving the lieutenant governor with a thin team as he attempts to continue a campaign that had already been plagued by poor polling. Mr. Robinson’s Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, had been pounding him with negative ads, and he had already been under scrutiny for past Facebook posts and speeches widely criticized as racist, antisemitic and transphobic.
Mr. Robinson has not yet announced new hires, though he has suggested he will be making some soon.
On Monday morning, as he spoke to a crowd outside the bakery, he held up a red sign in the shape of the state of North Carolina, with his name in large font. He promised to “take CNN to task for what they have done to us.”
He is scheduled to speak at another event on Monday afternoon in Boone.
Eduardo Medina is a Times reporter covering the South. An Alabama native, he is now based in Durham, N.C. More about Eduardo Medina
See more on: U.S. Politics, 2024 Elections: News, Polls and Analysis, CNN, Mark Robinson, Donald Trump
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Source: nytimes.com
