North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein in Raleigh, Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024. Photo by Carla Peay/The Atlanta Voice
GUILFORD COUNTY, NC – It’s day three of early voting in North Carolina and the candidates are making their cases to the voters in person at voting locations across the state. Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic candidate for Governor, cast his ballot at the Southeast Raleigh YMCA on Thursday, the first day of early voting in the state. Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for Governor, cast his ballot on Saturday at the Deep River Recreation Center in High Point.
“From our exit polling, what we’re seeing is a ton of conservatives getting out to vote early and I think they’re eager,” Robinson said. “What they’re eager for is change at the very top, at the federal level and at the state level.”
Robinson continues to denounce the CNN report released on September 19, which claimed Robinson made explicit racial and sexual posts on a message board several years ago. On Tuesday, Oct. 15, the Lt. Governor filed a $50 million lawsuit against CNN. Robinson called the CNN report a “high-tech lynching”, using the same term Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas used during his confirmation hearing in 1991.
Despite the report, Robinson maintains it will have no effect on his chances to win the governor’s race.
“We’re going to be on the ground with the people, talking to the people, meeting with the people and telling them about our vision,” Robinson said.
A few miles north of where Robinson was casting his ballot, Stein was meeting with canvassing volunteers to support Tanneshia Dukes, who is running for the North Carolina House of Representatives for District 59.
“I’m really excited about all the energy we’re experiencing around North Carolina,” Stein said. “The stakes of this election are incredibly high.” Stein is working hard for down ballot candidates in order to help elect enough Democrats to break the Supermajority in the state legislature.
Photo by Carla Peay/The Atlanta Voice
“I’ve been really heartened to see all the support we have gotten so far,” Stein said. As election day approaches, the polls have tightened up. As little as a week ago, a poll by Redfield & Wilson Strategies reported that Stein’s lead had climbed to 17 percent, but the most recent numbers have the race at seven percent.
“I feel really good about where we are, but polls will tighten,” Stein said. “I never pay too much attention to them. Head down, run hard, go through the tape, talk to as many voters as we can to try to show them how our vision can help their families have a better future.”
North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, accusing the outlet of reporting false claims about disturbing comments he allegedly made on a porn site forum. CNN’s report highlighted comments from a forum on Nude Africa, where Robinson reportedly referred to himself as a “black Nazi” and discussed voyeuristic behavior and transgender pornography. Robinson has denied making the comments but acknowledged visiting a local adult video store mentioned in the report.
Robinson’s legal team claims the lawsuit addresses political interference, though the case appears to lack strong evidence. CNN declined to comment, and the GOP candidate faces distancing from his own party, with key staff members resigning after the story surfaced. Robinson, who has a history of controversial remarks, is running against Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, who has maintained a lead in recent polls.
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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson sued CNN on Tuesday over its recent report that he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board, calling the reporting reckless and defamatory.
The lawsuit, filed in Wake County Superior Court, comes less than four weeks after a report that led many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign.
Robinson, who announced the lawsuit at a news conference in Raleigh with a Virginia-based attorney, has denied authoring the messages.
CNN “chose to publish despite knowing or recklessly disregarding that Lt. Gov. Robinson’s data — including his name, date of birth, passwords, and the email address supposedly associated with the NudeAfrica account — were previously compromised by multiple data breaches,” the lawsuit states, referencing the website.
Robinson, who would be the state’s first Black governor if elected, called the report a “high-tech lynching” on a candidate “who has been targeted from Day 1 by folks who disagree with me politically and want to see me destroyed.”
CNN declined to comment Tuesday, spokesperson Emily Kuhn said in an email.
The CNN report, which first aired Sept. 19, said Robinson left statements over a decade ago on the message board in which, in part, he referred to himself as a “black NAZI,” said he enjoyed transgender pornography, said he preferred Hitler to then-President Barack Obama, and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot.”
The network report said it matched details of the account on the message board to other online accounts held by Robinson by comparing usernames, a known email address and his full name. CNN reported that details discussed by the account holder matched Robinson’s age, length of marriage and other biographical information. CNN also said it compared figures of speech that came up frequently in his public Twitter profile that appeared in discussions by the account on the pornographic website.
Polls at the time of the CNN report already showed Democratic rival Josh Stein, the sitting attorney general, with a lead over Robinson. Early in-person voting begins Thursday statewide, and over 57,000 completed absentee ballots have been received so far.
Robinson also in the same defamation lawsuit sued a Greensboro punk rock band singer who alleged in a music video and in an interview with a media outlet that Robinson, in the 1990s and early 2000s, frequented a porn shop the singer once worked at and purchased videos. Louis Love Money, the other named defendant, released the video and spoke with other media outlets before the CNN report.
Robinson denies the allegation in the lawsuit, which reads, “Lt. Gov. Robinson was not spending hours at the video store, five nights a week. He was not renting or previewing videos, and he did not purchase ‘bootleg’ or other videos from Defendant Money.”
Money said in a phone interview Tuesday that he stands by his statements and the music video’s content as truthful: “My story hasn’t changed.”
The lawsuit, which seeks at least $50 million in damages, says the effort against Robinson “appears to be a coordinated attack aimed at derailing his campaign for governor.” It provides no evidence that the network or Money schemed with outside groups to create what Robinson alleges are false statements.
Attorney Jesse Binnall, right, speaks at a news conference, with his client North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, left, in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Karl B DeBlaker)
What to know about the 2024 Election
Robinson’s lawyer, Jesse Binnall, said that he expects to find more “bad actors,” and that entities, which he did not identify, have stonewalled his firm’s efforts to collect information.
“We will use every tool at our disposal now that a lawsuit has been filed, including the subpoena power, in order to continue pursuing the facts,” said Binnall, whose clients have included Trump and his campaign.
In North Carolina courts, a public official claiming defamation generally must show a defendant knew a statement was false or recklessly disregarded its untruthfulness.
Most of the top staff running Robinson’s campaign and his lieutenant governor’s office quit following the CNN report, and the Republican Governors Association, which had already spent millions of dollars in advertising backing Robinson, stopped supporting his bid. And Democrats from presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris to downballot state candidates began running ads linking their opponents to Robinson.
Robinson’s campaign isn’t running TV commercials now. He said that “we’ve chosen to go in a different direction” and focus on in-person campaign stops.
Robinson already had a history of inflammatory comments about topics like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights that Stein and his allies have emphasized in opposing him on TV commercials and online.
Stein spokesperson Morgan Hopkins said Tuesday in a statement that “even before the CNN report, North Carolinians have known for a long time that Mark Robinson is completely unfit to be Governor.”
Hurricane Helene and its aftermath took the CNN report off the front pages. Robinson worked for several days with a central North Carolina sheriff collecting relief supplies and criticized Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper — barred by term limits from seeking reelection — for state government’s response in the initial stages of relief.
Trump endorsed Robinson before the March gubernatorial primary, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids” for his speaking ability. Robinson had been a frequent presence at Trump’s North Carolina campaign stops, but he hasn’t participated in such an event since the CNN report.
Mark Robinson, the Republican lieutenant governor of North Carolina running for governor, made dozens of incendiary comments on a porn message board years ago, according to a bombshell report published by CNN on Thursday.
Posting under a pseudonym, Robinson called himself a “Black Nazi” who supported the return of slavery in the U.S. and repeatedly excoriated Martin Luther King Jr. Some of the revelations began to leak out in political circles earlier Thursday, leading to calls for him to drop out of the gubernatorial race — calls that are certain to grow in number and volume now.
In a video released minutes prior to the story’s release, the lieutenant governor denounced the allegations as “salacious, tabloid trash” and vowed to stay in the race. “Let me reassure you. The things that you will see in that story, those are not the words of Mark Robinson,” he said. “You know my words, you know my character, and you know that I have been completely transparent in this race and before.”
“Clarence Thomas famously once said he was the victim of a high-tech lynching,” he said. “Well, it looks like Mark Robinson is, too.”
CNN reports that Robinson made numerous comments on the porn site NudeAfrica between 2008 and 2012 under the username “minisoldr,” a name that the outlet linked to Robinson through old social-media accounts, including a past X profile that used that name. On the porn site, he described at length his sexual proclivities, including peeping on women in a public-gym locker room as a teenager and later fantasizing about the incident. He also frequently used homophobic and transphobic slurs.
In one comment from 2010, he indicated that he didn’t care if a celebrity had gotten an abortion. “I don’t care. I just wanna see the sex tape!” he wrote. (He has been virulently anti-abortion during his campaign.)
Robinson, who has publicly questioned some of the events of the Holocaust, allegedly used antisemitic slurs and displayed an affinity for Adolf Hitler. In one 2012 comment, he expressed a preference for the dictator over then-president Barack Obama. “I’d take Hitler over any of the sh*t that’s in Washington right now!” Robinson said.
The report also alleges that Robinson made several incendiary comments against King, in particular:
In a series of seven posts in October 2011, Robinson disparaged Martin Luther King in such intense terms, calling him a “commie bastard,” “worse than a maggot,” a “ho f**king, phony,” and a “huckster,” that a user in the thread accused him of being in the KKK. Robinson responded by directing a slur at King.
Before the article even came out, the Carolina Journal reported that Robinson’s staff, as well as members of Donald Trump’s campaign, had been pressuring the lieutenant governor to drop his bid for governor as the CNN report loomed. Michael Lonergan, a Robinson spokesman, told the National Review at the time that it’s “complete fiction” that he will drop out from the race. A senior Trump campaign adviser denied that the campaign was trying to push Robinson out.
Robinson has been trailing behind his Democratic opponent Josh Stein, the North Carolina attorney general, in recent weeks. A Quinnipiac University poll from earlier this month had Stein leading Robinson 51 to 41 percent among likely voters. Robinson previously appeared alongside Trump at a March rally ahead of the primary election. During that appearance, the former president referred to Robinson as, “Martin Luther King on steroids.” After the CNN report was published, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which analyzes elections, altered its ranking of the North Carolina race to favor Democrats.
Congressman Richard Hudson, the head of the House GOP’s campaign arm, told Punchbowl News, “The allegations are very concerning. He says they’re not true. I think he needs to assure the people of the state in more detail that they aren’t true.” North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis sounded more resigned in a late night X post:
The allegations emerged with little time left for Robinson to drop out, if he wanted to. According to the North Carolina Board of Elections, candidates had until 11:59 p.m. Thursday evening to submit a written request to withdraw from their race. As of 12:01 am Friday, the NCBOE received no such request.
The North Carolina Republican Party released a statement Thursday night which said that Robinson has “categorically denied the allegations made by CNN.” The state GOP accused “the Left” of “trying to demonize him via personal attacks.”
The Harris-Walz campaign immediately jumped on the report, attempting to tie Trump directly to Robinson amid the controversy by sharing photos of them together as well as clips of Trump praising the gubernatorial candidate.
In additional reporting, Politico found that Robinson’s personal email address was registered on Ashley Madison, an online dating site aimed at married people who are seeking to have an affair.
Earlier this month, the Assembly, a local news site, reported that the lieutenant governor frequented a Greensboro porn shop in the 1990s and early 2000s. The outlet spoke to several former employees of the establishment who allege that Robinson would visit the store as often as five times a week to watch videos. A spokesman for Robinson campaign has denied the allegations in the article.
If you’re familiar with Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, it’s probably for his hard-line stance on abortion and his outlandish claims on everything from Black Panther (made by “an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists”) to the Holocaust (“hogwash”). But get ready for a new and slightly more fun reason: In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Evangelical Christian used to go to the pornography store a lot. Like, a lot.
That’s according to a former employee at 24-hour porn-video shops in Greensboro, who spoke with the North Carolina investigative website TheAssembly. He says Robinson was coming in to watch videos in a private booth as many as five nights a week. The man, Louis Money, said that at one of the stores he worked at, Gents, patrons could buy videos for $50 each or “preview” them in private booths for $8. “Every night that I worked, which would have been five nights a week, I saw Mark,” Money said. “He was spending a good amount of money.” Robinson previewed at least two tapes a night, per Money. Five other customers and employees confirmed Robinson’s frequent presence; one said Robinson would even bring in pizza for the fellas.
A campaign spokesperson described The Assembly’s report as “bullshit.”
In his memoir, Robinson wrote that he was “guilty of bad money management” and that “when I had money and should have been putting it in the bank or spending it on essential things … I was just throwing money away.” Between 1998 and 2003, Robinson’s family filed for bankruptcy three times.
While everyone interviewed by The Assemblysaid they liked Robinson, his porn era was dragged back to the surface after Money made a rap-rock music video in August called “The Lt. Governor Owes Me Money.” According to Money, Robinson purchased “hundreds” of bootleg porn compilations that Money made — though he forgot to pay him the $25 for the last one.
Republicans have longbeenobsessed with pornography as part of their moral crusade in America. At least Robinson, according to his former friend, put his money where his mouth is. In this decade, this exposé will instead likely help the candidate with the Barstool bro-vote.
Night one of the Republican National Convention included appearances from a number of Black Republican senators and congressmen. Photo by Donnell Suggs/The Atlanta Voice
MILWAUKEE — After Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene took the stage on night one of the Republican National Convention the next three speakers were all Black men. Current Lt. Governor of North Carolina Mark Robinson, Texas Congressman Wesley Hunt, and Congressman John James of Michigan’s 10th District all spoke about their personal stories, the importance of voting this November, and why former United States President Donald J. Trump is the best choice for president.
Robinson, the first Black Lt. governor in the history of North Carolina, led things off by telling a story about growing up poor as the ninth of 10 children in North Carolina. “There is hope and I’m living proof,” said Robinson, who is running for a gubernatorial campaign for his state’s seat this fall. Robinson went on to say the country’s economics were better during the first Trump administration and that Republican voters have to help put him back in office this November.
“Under President Trump the American dream was alive and well,” he said. “This November lets select the Braveheart of our time, Donald J. Trump.”
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson was one of four Black republican politicians to take the stage on night one of the Republican National Convention. Photo by Donnell Suggs/The Atlanta Voice
“On November 5, we the people can fix the Democratic disaster,” Hunt said of the current economy under the Biden-Harris administration. “We can fix this disaster by electing Donald John Trump and sending him back to where he belongs in the White House.”
“We must win in November to take our country back,” Hunt said.
Congressman John James of Michigan, also a veteran, followed Hunt onto the stage and shared the story of how his father grew up in Starkville, Mississippi and couldn’t even dream of attending Mississippi State University because of Jim Crow. Despite that injustice and racism, James said he was raised by his parents that America was not a racist country.
United States Senator Tim Scott followed a bit later and upon taking the stage asked the crowd, “Are you ready for four more years of Donald Trump?”
Scott began by talking about the attempted assassination attempt of Trump on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania. He told the crowd that if they didn’t believe in miracles before Saturday they better believe now.
“We are not setting the course for the next four years, we are setting the course for the next 40 years,” Scott said. “We are the Republican Party of Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and Donald Trump.”
Byron Donalds, Congressman out of Florida, took the stage to massive applause. He was there to close the Black portion of the evening’s speakers. Wearing a red tie and navy blue suit, Donalds stayed on brand and spoke mostly about the value of education.
“Donald Trump believes every parent deserves a choice and every child deserves a chance,” Donalds said. “If there was ever a time in our nation to come together, that time is now. With Trump our economy will boom again. Together we will make America great again.”
Scott said he always gets in trouble for saying this but he was going to say it again anyway: “America is not a racist country,” said Scott.
If you take the speaker lineup on night one of the Republican National Convention as proof, at least we can all agree that the Republican Party is doing a better job of proving that it is not.
Senate Leader Phil Berger, left, talks with Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson during a press conference in this 2021 file photo.
Ethan Hyman
ehyman@newsobserver.com
RALEIGH
Welcome to the governor’s race edition of our Under the Dome politics newsletter. I’m Dawn Vaughan, The News & Observer’s state Capitol bureau chief.
The first million-dollar ad buy is out in the governor’s race between Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein and Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.
Stein’s ad, which came out on Tuesday morning and cost more than $1 million to air across statewide television and digital markets, shows a variety of clips of Robinson talking about abortion.
Robinson, who chose with his now-wife to end her pregnancy in abortion in 1989, is adamantly anti-abortion now.
He said on state Rep. Jeff McNeely’s radio show that if he won the election he would sign a “heartbeat” bill, which would ban abortion after cardiac activity is detected around six weeks into gestation. The ad showed a clip from that show, and also played a clip of a newly revealedFacebook Live video Robinson did in 2019, saying that women should “keep your skirt down.”
I watched the entire Robinson Facebook Live, most of which is about abortion,and wrote about what else he said on that video. More details in that story.
What the most powerful Republican senator says about abortion
While Robinson wants to sign a “heartbeat” abortion bill into law, the only way he gets one is if the General Assembly, which is currently completely controlled by Republicans, sends him one.
The abortion bill that became law in 2023, Senate Bill 20, was a deal brokered among Republicans. They agreed on a 12-weekban, with multiple exceptions, after the first trimester of pregnancy.
Early in that intrapartydebate, Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, told reporters where he stood on abortion legislation, which was pretty much where the final law landed.
So I asked him this past week what he thinks legislation from Republicans about abortion could look like next year, if Robinson wins the governor’s race. Berger said he prefers not to change the current abortion law next year. He also said, as he has before, that he doesn’t want abortion legislation passed this legislative session (the House doesn’t, either).
But there are a few unknowns out there, including the results of the election not just for governor, but for all 170 seats in the General Assembly, as they’re on November ballots, too.
“I personally would not be in favor of making any changes next year. We will see what happens as far as the election, and what the majorities look like in both the House and the Senate next year. And we’ll just see what happens. I can just speak to where I am,” he said, noting that other senators may think differently.
Berger said that there are Republican lawmakers who support “heartbeat” legislation. But he also pointed out what polling shows, as he mentioned ahead of the 2023 law as well.
“One of the things that I’ve looked at is where the vast majority of people in the state of North Carolina are. And I’ve yet to see any polling that shows that prohibiting abortions, or having a six- or eight-week time frame, is something that enjoys support of a majority of people in the state of North Carolina — or a majority of voters in the state of North Carolina. And it’s, I mean, it’s not even close,” Berger said.
Stein, like other Democrats, opposed North Carolina’s recent change to abortion law as well as the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, left, and Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, right, will move on to North Carolina’s general election for governor in 2024.
Stay informed about #ncpol
Don’t forget to follow our Under the Dome tweets and listen to our Under the Dome podcastto stay up to date. Our new episode posts Monday morning, I’m joined by my legislative politics team colleagues Kyle Ingram and Avi Bajpai. We talk about the Senate Democrats walking out before a vote on a surprise mask/campaign finance bill on Thursday, and how that may play out this week when the bill is in the House. Plus the latest on an abortion lawsuit and early voting.
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Related stories from Raleigh News & Observer
Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan is the Capitol Bureau Chief for The News & Observer, leading coverage of the legislative and executive branches in North Carolina with a focus on the governor, General Assembly leadership and state budget. She has received the McClatchy President’s Award, N.C. Open Government Coalition Sunshine Award and several North Carolina Press Association awards, including for politics and investigative reporting.
RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) — North Carolina primary voters were choosing potential successors to term-limited Gov. Roy Cooper on Tuesday, with the Democratic attorney general and the Republican lieutenant governor among those seeking to advance to what is expected to be an expensive and competitive fall campaign.
Five Democrats and three Republicans were competing for their parties’ gubernatorial nominations in the nation’s ninth-largest state, which is also a likely presidential battleground this year.
Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, State Treasurer Dale Folwell and trial attorney Bill Graham are seeking the GOP nomination. The Democratic field includes Attorney General Josh Stein – who received Cooper’s endorsement – former state Supreme Court Justice Mike Morgan and three other candidates who’ve spent very little.
Robinson, who would be the state’s first Black governor, formally received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement during the weekend at a rally. Trump called him “Martin Luther King on steroids,” comparing his speaking abilities to those of the late civil rights leader.
Robinson has consistently been the Republican frontrunner in the race, but recently his opponents have been hitting the airwaves challenging some of his more controversial comments.
North Carolina is poised to be one of the most competitive states this fall as President Joe Biden and Trump appear headed toward a likely rematch. The governor’s race could have implications for the presidential contest if Democrats can tap into controversies surrounding Trump and Robinson to portray the Republicans as out of step with the state’s urban areas and with unaffiliated voters, who are now the state’s largest voting group.
Cooper, a Democrat first elected governor in 2016, has continued a long run of Democratic dominance in the governor’s mansion in a Southern state that otherwise has shifted rightward. The GOP has won only one gubernatorial race since 1992.
A general election victory by a Republican would essentially neuter veto power that Cooper has used a record number of times to block additional abortion restrictions, stricter requirements for voters and other policies backed by conservatives. GOP legislators have been able to override many of Cooper’s vetoes, however.
Robinson, who has a working-class background, is a favorite of the party’s GOP base. While he raised more money overall than primary rivals, Folwell and Graham have used personal funds toward late-campaign media buys. They’ve questioned Robinson’s general-election electability, particularly in light of his rhetoric while lieutenant governor and for comments he made on social media before entering politics.
Stein, the son of a civil rights lawyer, is by far the largest fundraiser in the race. His campaign committee collected more than $19.1 million and had $12.7 million in cash in mid-February, according to the most recent campaign report summaries filed.
“I’m excited. Election days are always great because it’s an opportunity for people to choose the government, the people who represent them,” Stein said. “And I’m excited about the campaign we’re running. It’s about building a brighter future for North Carolina to deliver on the promise of our state to our people, which is that if you work hard, you can succeed no matter where you live in this state.”
Stein, who would be the state’s first Jewish governor if elected, would largely seek to continue Cooper’s agenda to increase public education funding and promote clean energy industries. The former state legislator was narrowly elected attorney general in 2016 and has focused recently on protecting citizens from polluters, illegal drugs and high electric bills.
“What service is all about trying to help people live the life that they want,” Stein said. “And we can help people have better schools, safer communities and an economy that works for everybody. That’s what my campaign is about. That’s what I want to do as governor. And that’s a message that works for people who are Republican, who are Democratic or who are unaffiliated.”
Robinson, who is already the state’s first Black lieutenant governor, has dismissed what the left calls climate change as “junk science,” and has fought teachers who he says have assigned inappropriate reading materials on racism and sexuality to young pupils. Robinson has said making education leaders accountable and teaching students the basics are among his policy goals if elected.
Before Tuesday, more than 690,000 people had cast early in-person and mail-in ballots in North Carolina, where voters also were choosing nominees for other statewide executive and appellate court positions.
ABC11’s Anthony Wilson and The Associated Press contributed.
SELMA, NC – APRIL 09: Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson joins the stage with former U.S. President Donald Trump during a rally at The Farm at 95 on April 9, 2022 in Selma, North Carolina. The rally comes about five weeks before North Carolinas primary elections where Trump has thrown his support behind candidates in some key Republican races.
Former President Donald Trump is known for making grandiose proclamations, but his comments on Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago might catch a lot of Black people off guard.
During the joint campaign event with North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, Trump compared the gubernatorial candidate to our most famous Civil Rights icon. “First, it was the voice,” Trump said about Robinson. “I said, ‘That voice is good.’” He added, “And then, I said, ‘You know what, I swear, I think you’re better than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’”
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Facebook posts from an account that appears to belong to North Carolina Lt. Gov. also suggest that Robinson just might have a problem with his own people.
“Someone asked me if I considered myself part of the ‘African-American’ community. I told them NO!” reads a Facebook post. “They asked me why and I said, ‘Why would I want to be part of a “community” that devalues it’s fathers, overburdens it’s mothers, and murders its children by the millions? Why would I want to be part of a “community” that sucks from the putrid tit of the government and then complains about getting sour milk?’”
“It’s bad enough Donald Trump endorsed and campaigned alongside Mark Robinson, a notorious extremist who disparaged the Black community and trashed the Civil Rights Movement,” said DNC National Press Secretary Sarafina Chitika, in a statement, “but now he’s bringing him back out on the campaign trail. When Trump said that Robinson – a man who claims the Civil Rights Movement was a shadowy subplot to ‘subvert capitalism’ that made Black Americans worse off – is ‘better than Dr. Martin Luther King,’ he insulted and disrespected generations of Black Americans who have fought tirelessly for their rights.”