If North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson hoped that last week’s allegations would be a one-day story, the right-wing Republican has since learned otherwise. Indeed, while it was a devastating CNN report that sparked the gubernatorial candidate’s latest scandal, similar reports soon followed.
Politico, for example, published a report alleging that an email address belonging to Robinson “was registered on Ashley Madison, a website designed for married people seeking affairs.” A day later, The Washington Post reported, “A porn site user linked to North Carolina gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson praised Adolf Hitler’s book ‘Mein Kampf.’”
As this week got underway, Politico also reported that user data showed “that the person using the ‘Nude Africa’ account that reportedly belonged to Robinson had accessed the porn website from a location not far from Robinson’s home.”
And while MSNBC and NBC News haven’t independently verified any of these reports, and the extremist candidate denies the allegations, a great many Republicans have found the meticulously reported allegations credible. Indeed, much of Robinson’s campaign staff — who were apparently unbothered by all of the earlier revelations about the radical candidate — resigned en masse in recent days.
They’re not the only ones jumping ship. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, the senior senator from Robinson’s home state, indicated this week that he’s not going to vote for his party’s gubernatorial nominee. Around the same time, two Republican governors — Georgia’s Brian Kemp and Tennessee’s Bill Lee — announced that they’re withdrawing their earlier Robinson endorsements.
In case that weren’t quite enough, the Republican Governors Association said in a statement that its pro-Robinson ads are poised to expire — and “no further placements have been made.”
But the gubernatorial candidate can take some comfort in the fact that Donald Trump and JD Vance haven’t yet abandoned him.
On Sunday, the Ohio senator said the Robinson allegations “aren’t necessarily reality,” and as The Charlotte Observer reported, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee made related comments a day later.
‘What (Robinson) said or didn’t say is ultimately between him and the people of North Carolina,’ Vance told a reporter at [Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte]. Asked by another reporter if he would continue to support Robinson’s campaign, Vance said he would ‘continue to support the people of North Carolina.’ When a third reporter questioned whether that meant the Trump campaign would rescind its Robinson endorsement, the crowd booed loudly and Vance gave a similar answer.”
As part of the same Q&A, Vance went on to condemn the media’s interest in Robinson’s scandal, while repeatedly downplaying the fiasco as a “sex scandal.”
JD Vance: A sex scandal in North Carolina is between Lieutenant Governor and the people of North Carolina pic.twitter.com/zc1mn63ng0 I can appreciate how the senator arrived at this — if the allegations are true, Robinson published disgusting comments on a porn website — but I also think it’s fair to say that “sex scandal” doesn’t fully capture the scope of the controversy. We are, after all, talking about a right-wing candidate who reportedly described himself as a “Nazi,” argued that slavery wasn’t necessarily a “bad” thing and had positive things to say about Hitler’s book, among other things. We’ve all seen plenty of politicians caught up in “sex scandals.” This is … something else. For his part, Robinson told reporters that he intends to go after news organizations such as CNN “full throttle.” Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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