The North Carolina “Black Nazi” Who Could Cost Trump the Presidency
Will Mark Robinson’s gross posts drag down the other Republicans on the ballot?
DONALD TRUMP ONCE CALLED Mark Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids,” but old internet posts make the North Carolina lieutenant governor sound more like a perverted Louis Farrakhan.
“I’m a black NAZI!” Robinson wrote pseudonymously on the message board of a pornographic website in 2010, according to CNN. The network also reported Thursday that, during the period from 2008 to 2012 when he left comments on the website, Robinson used the antisemitic slur “hebe” and praised Adolf Hitler.
Robinson, the GOP’s controversial nominee for governor in the swing state, also allegedly posted about enjoying “tranny” pornography, a vice that conflicts with his anti-transgender conservative Christian rhetoric as a politician. He denied making the incendiary comments or even using the website in question, Nude Africa.
Weighed down by constant controversy, the polarizing pol was already struggling in his gubernatorial race before Thursday’s bombshell. The new allegations amounted to a one-two punch that combined accusations of antisemitism with lurid and hypocritical sexual tastes. It knocked Robinson off the campaign trail for a day. More concerning for national Republicans, it put Trump’s presidential campaign in the blast radius in a must-win state.
Dallas Woodhouse, a former North Carolina GOP executive director, said Robinson’s problems are “unique” to him but they could still make the state more challenging for Trump and force the presidential campaign to spend a little more time and money in the state at the expense of campaigning elsewhere.
“Most Republicans knew they had a losing candidate here for governor,” Woodhouse said. “This was a trainwreck from the beginning. But no one knew how bad it would be.”
Trump is essentially tied with Vice President Kamala Harris in North Carolina polls, while Robinson is running almost double digits behind his Democratic opponent, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein. No other top-level swing-state Republican is performing as poorly as Robinson, who is so damaged and problematic that Republicans and Democrats alike are wondering if he could drag down Trump just enough to cost him the state and therefore a return to the White House. News of Robinson’s pro-Hitler remarks was particularly poorly timed for Trump, who hours later headlined an event denouncing antisemitism.
“Robinson’s problems are all about his character. And Trump’s problems are rooted in character. And if voters dislike Robinson and have qualms about Trump’s character, that could have a reverse-coattail effect,” said Carter Wrenn, a longtime North Carolina Republican consultant.
“Usually it’s the other way around: the candidate for governor is trying not to get dragged down by the top of the ticket. And I’ve never seen the top of the ticket get dragged down—but it’s so tight right now and this is so crazy that I just don’t know,” Wrenn said.
A North Carolina loss could not only foil Trump’s re-election chances, it would be a particular home-state humiliation for his two handpicked co-chairs of the Republican National Committee: Michael Whatley, who is the state’s former GOP chair, and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, who is a North Carolina native.
Trump campaign officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed confidence about his standing in the state (Democrats say the same thing about Harris), but Trump insiders had to spend Thursday afternoon avoiding questions about Robinson and swatting down local reports that the former president was pressuring Robinson to quit the race entirely. Those insiders didn’t deny that Robinson may not appear at future North Carolina events with the former president.
Some Democrats believe the “reverse coattails” effect Wrenn mentioned already played out in 2020, when President Joe Biden narrowly lost North Carolina in the wake of a sex scandal involving Senate candidate Cal Cunningham. “They hung Cunningham around Biden’s neck, now Trump can get a taste of it with Robinson,” said a North Carolina Democrat involved with the Harris campaign.
Before each won his respective GOP primary this year, Trump praised Robinson, a pastor, for his prodigious rhetorical skills. If elected, Robinson would be the state’s first black governor.
“This is Martin Luther King on steroids,” Trump said at a March 2 rally in Greensboro. “I told that to Mark. I said, I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two.”
Harris’s campaign posted a video of those remarks Thursday afternoon.
When he compared Robinson to King, Trump noted at the time that the North Carolinian didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about the compliment. The messages posted on Nude Africa that CNN linked to Robinson, show he loathed the civil rights icon.
“Get that fucking commie bastard off the National Mall!,” Robinson wrote in 2011 when President Barack Obama dedicated a memorial to King in Washington.
When he was accused of being a white supremacist, Robinson allegedly responded: “I’m not in the KKK. They don’t let blacks join. If I was in the KKK I would have called him Martin Lucifer Koon!”
Robinson, CNN reported, said he liked Adolf Hitler’s leadership more than Obama’s in 2012 (“I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now!”), expressed no reservations about bringing back slavery for some people, and made more slurs about blacks, whites, Jews, Muslims, and gays.
THE SUM TOTAL OF THE INFLAMMATORY REMARKS, posted under a Robinson-linked username, “minisoldr,” bear a strong resemblance to comments he has made under his own name in the past about women, Muslims, Jews, and LGBT people. The Nazi-loving, homophobic, and antisemitic comments also echo some of the incendiary rhetoric of Farrakhan, who was labeled “Black Hitler” by critics.
Robinson’s extremism has both killed his fundraising and boosted his opponent, Stein, who has twice run attack ads that just feature video of the lieutenant governor talking. In one spot, Robinson speaks in violent terms about why he has an AR-15; in the other, Robinson expresses his staunch opposition to abortion rights. Robinson, however, was forced to publicly discuss how his wife had an abortion in 1989 after WRAL reported he had made a Facebook post about it in 2012.
Robinson first exploded on the political scene in 2018 when, as a political neophyte, he harangued the Greensboro City Council in opposition to a plan to cancel a local gun show in the immediate aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Florida. The viral clip, shared by a local congressman, launched the political career of a man who had lost his job three years before when the office furniture plant he worked at closed.
Robinson jumped into a crowded low-spending race for lieutenant governor and won. His oratory and bombastic style made Republican hearts go pitter-patter and, after he announced his gubernatorial bid in April 2023, he was far ahead in name ID and polls. He faced only token opposition and easily won Trump’s endorsement.
WHEN IT BECAME APPARENT ON THURSDAY that the bombshell CNN story was coming, national Democrats found themselves emotionally torn. One operative familiar with the workings of the Harris campaign mused that there was disappointment that the story was emerging in mid September as opposed to October. Another top Democratic official close to the White House said they feared Robinson would drop out of the contest and, by virtue, make it easier for Republicans to win the governorship and for Trump to win the state. “We need him to stay in the race,” the official said.
But even in those moments of concern, Democrats didn’t hide how excited they were by the story and how advantageously they viewed it. The Harris campaign was quick out of the gate to re-publicize instances of Trump praising Robinson. Top Harris adviser David Plouffe noted that North Carolina came with 16 Electoral College votes.
Republicans agreed that those Electoral College votes were now more in play.
“That’s the only thing that matters,” said Doug Heye, a longtime GOP operative who hails from North Carolina. “Robinson was already toast. We have known for a while now that the Trump campaign was not happy with Robinson. The question is does this drown out some of Trump’s message?”
Is talking about being a black Hitler not an effective closing message?
“It’s not what I’d lean on,” said Heye.
Mark Robinson is a vile hypocrite. He referred to LGTBQ+ people as filth, but he likes trans porn?! He doesn’t seem to know that Nazis would have sent him to a concentration camp or murdered him back in the 1930’s and 40’s. The Nazis thought black people were inferior. Mark Robinson is just stupid. I’m an NC voter, and I approved this message.
North Carolinian here. Robinson is the worst, but the entire statewide GOP ticket is batshit crazy. The woman running for Superintendent of Public Education (who homeschools her kids) is a J6 truther who called for Obama to be executed at Gitmo. Dan Bishop, running for attorney general, crafted the infamous Bathroom Bill that cost the state millions. The NC GOP has lost its mind.