Will Mark Robinson Derail Trump’s Chances in North Carolina?

Donald Trump jetted to the rolling hills of Asheboro, North Carolina, in late August, for his first outdoor rally since a gunman tried to kill him. The former President’s Boeing 757, known as Trump Force One, performed a showy flyover as thousands of supporters cheered. Wearing a MAGA hat and pumping his fist, he walked onstage to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” and was just forty-five seconds into his remarks when he delivered a shout-out to the state’s Republican nominee for governor and invited him onto the stage. “Mark Robinson!” Trump said. “He’s out there. He’s fighting. He’s fighting. He’s a great one.”

That was then. Robinson is now in trouble, following CNN’s disclosure, last Thursday, of comments posted more than a decade ago on a pornography site called Nude Africa, in which he reportedly made lewd sexual comments, called himself a “black NAZI,” belittled Martin Luther King, Jr., and spoke up for slavery. Trump was in North Carolina again on Saturday, for a rally at the Wilmington airport. But this time Robinson, who is currently the state’s lieutenant governor, wasn’t there. Even as Trump name-checked other candidates on the North Carolina ballot, he avoided all mention of a man he had earlier praised as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”