Trump protests in North Carolina as his hand-picked gubernatorial candidate sinks into controversy

CNN
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Donald Trump returned to North Carolina for a campaign rally on Saturday, where the former president will face the chaos in the key swing state that he helped create.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson – whom Trump has repeatedly compared to Martin Luther King Jr. – refused to drop out of the race by Thursday's deadline, ignoring calls from the NAACP, North Carolina newspaper editorial boards and some Republican members of Congress to do so.

That pressure followed a CNN report detailing his past of inflammatory comments on a porn website's message board. Robinson, the current lieutenant governor of North Carolina, has called himself a “black NAZI,” advocated for the reinstatement of slavery, made repeated sexually explicit comments, and more.

The Trump campaign did not invite Robinson to the former president's rally in Wilmington on Saturday, and Trump made no mention of the lieutenant governor in his speeches.

On Friday, Trump's Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, launched a new television ad linking Trump to Robinson. It was the first time the Harris campaign used an ad to link the former president to a candidate on the lower ballots.

While the ad doesn't mention Robinson's offensive comments on message boards about porn, it does mix Trump's past praise for Robinson with some of the Republican gubernatorial candidate's anti-abortion comments, including support for a nationwide ban on abortion with no exceptions.

It begins with clips of Trump calling Robinson an “incredible lieutenant governor” and describing him as “better than Martin Luther King.” One video includes Robinson saying, “For me, there is no compromise on the abortion issue” and “We could pass a law and say, 'You cannot perform abortions in North Carolina for any reason.'”

The attempt to link Trump to Robinson, who polls show trailing far behind Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein in the governor's race, comes as the Harris team is plotting paths to 270 electoral college votes, including four Sun Belt states: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

Trump defeated Joe Biden in North Carolina by one percentage point in 2020. But polls this year have shown a neck-and-neck race between Harris and Trump. The former president's path back to the White House would be much more difficult without the state's 16 electoral votes.

Trump's running mate and Senator JD Vance of Ohio said Saturday that the Robinson scandal will be “played out in the court of public opinion,” the most direct comment yet from the former president's campaign on the matter.

“I don't not believe him. I don't believe him,” Vance told NBC 10 Philadelphia when asked if he believes Robinson's claims that the porn message board comments were not his. “I just think sometimes these things are in the court of public opinion. He's going to make whatever arguments he wants to make. I'm sure the news media and others will look more closely at these comments.”

Regarding Robinson's official election in North Carolina, Vance said, “I think fundamentally it's up to Mark Robinson and the people of North Carolina to decide whether he's going to be their governor, and that's what we're going to focus on.”

In a statement to CNN following KFile's reporting on Thursday, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said, “President Trump's campaign is focused on winning the White House and saving this country. North Carolina is an essential part of that plan. We are confident that President Trump will win the Tar Heel State again when voters compare Trump's record of a strong economy, low inflation, a secure border and safe roads with the failures of Biden-Harris. We will not take our eye off the ball.”

Before Saturday, Robinson had attended most, if not all, of Trump's recent events in North Carolina. Last month, the lieutenant governor spoke at Trump's economic rally in Asheville, and the former president brought him on stage in Asheboro.

At a campaign rally in Greensboro in March, Trump recalled hearing Robinson speak on the plane and described him as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

“I said, 'I think you're better than Martin Luther King. I think you're Martin Luther King times two,'” Trump said at the time.

Robinson's history as an author of inflammatory commentary on the civil rights movement, school shooting victims, the Holocaust and other issues has long made him a political lightning rod.

But Trump ignored that history and endorsed Robinson in March, who could join a long list of candidates Trump endorsed after heaping praise on him and who, despite concerns, won the Republican nomination only to lose the general election. That list includes Kari Lake, who is running for governor of Arizona in 2022, Herschel Walker, who is running for Senate in Georgia in 2022, Doug Mastriano, who is running for governor of Pennsylvania in 2022, and others.

“I have one bad trait,” Trump said at a rally in Georgia last month. “I only like people who like me.”

Some Republicans seemed to acknowledge that the revelations surrounding Robinson could effectively dash their party's hopes for the North Carolina governorship.

And many in the party quickly distanced themselves from Robinson. A previously planned fundraiser for Robinson with Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, is no longer taking place, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The question, however, is whether a poor performance by Robinson would hurt the votes of other party members in North Carolina, including Trump.

The state's top senator, Republican Thom Tillis, seemed aware of the political realities of the campaign, saying on social media that Thursday was “a tough day” and that Republicans need to “focus on the elections they can win” – referring to the state's presidential, legislative and judicial elections.

“If Harris wins North Carolina, she wins the White House. We cannot allow that,” Tillis said.

On Friday, the senator called on Robinson to take responsibility for his actions “if the reporting is true.”

“If the reporting on Mark Robinson is a pure media fabrication, he must take legal action immediately. If the reporting is true, he owes it to President Trump and every Republican to take responsibility for his actions and put the future of North Carolina and our party before himself,” Tillis said on social media.

Conservative commentator Erick Erickson compared Robinson to Walker, Lake and other defeated Trump-backed candidates on his radio show Friday.

“Any time you outsource the vetting of your candidates to Donald Trump, it blows up in your face,” Erickson said. “That will now force Donald Trump to spend money in a state that he should have had control of. That's the problem.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN's Alayna Treene, Terence Burlij, Aaron Pellish, Kit Maher and Kate Sullivan contributed to this report.