Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said reports that North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson called himself a “black NAZI!” in posts on the porn forum Nude Africa a decade ago are “beyond disconcerting” and should prompt him to end his political career if true.
“If these allegations are true, he is unfit to hold office,” the long-serving South Carolina senator said Sunday. “If they are not true, he deserves the best defamation trial in the history of the country.”
But Graham stopped short of asking Robinson, who has denied CNN’s claims that the inflammatory forum posts were his, to drop his candidacy for governor of the state or Donald Trump, who has called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids,” to drop his support for the candidate.
“I think what’s going to happen here is he deserves a chance to defend himself,” Graham said. “He claims they were artificially created.”
Graham advised Robinson, who has a controversial and racist past, to “hire the best lawyer I can find. I will sue CNN, because what they are saying about him is just unbelievable.”
But Graham said Robinson “has to do more … he has a right to defend himself. He has an obligation to defend himself. This is a burden on his campaign.” But he added that he did not think the Trump protégé’s comments “hurt Trump.”
“But as for Robinson, he is a political zombie if he does not offer a credible defense,” Graham added.
Robinson’s alleged comments on a pornographic website dominated Sunday talk shows in the United States, a day after Trump held a rally for 10,000 supporters in North Carolina without mentioning Robinson or the candidate appearing on stage.
“Those are not my words and they don’t characterize me,” Robinson, North Carolina’s first black lieutenant governor, said of the alleged posts. He said he intends to stay in the race.
Robinson’s opponent, former state Attorney General Josh Stein, told CNN that his opponent’s “vile insults” made him “totally unqualified” to be governor.
“What he said in his posts is consistent with what he said publicly on Facebook,” Stein said. “He kissed Hitler, he complimented him, he said he was a Nazi, he bought stuffed SS soldiers, he insisted he wanted to reinstate slavery … things that defy belief.”
One of the comments Robinson allegedly made on the site, while Barack Obama was in the White House, included: “I prefer Hitler to whatever the hell is in Washington right now!” and “Slavery is not a bad thing. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it back. I would definitely buy a few of those.”
The controversy over Robinson’s alleged remarks comes as North Carolina, a typically red state, is a must-win state for Trump if he wants to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.
Polls show Stein with an average lead of about 10 points over Robinson, but other Democratic candidates running in the state, including presidential candidate Kamala Harris, are in tighter races.
It’s unclear how Robinson’s alleged comments will affect support for Trump, but Democrats are hoping to tie them to Republican campaigns at the local and national levels.
North Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman Anderson Clayton said Robinson was a “standard bearer” as local Republicans appeared to support their candidate. “He represents their party … The rest of the Republican ticket would just be rubber-stamping his agenda,” she said.
On Sunday, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told ABC’s This Week that controversy surrounding Robinson was “to be expected” because Robinson’s tenure in public life “has repeatedly shown erratic, sometimes highly offensive, statements.”
But Christie acknowledged that this poses a problem for Republicans because “with Donald Trump being your recruiting agent for candidates in key states, we’re going to continue to get our asses kicked.”
Christie said he doubted other Republicans would be affected, a political concept known as “reverse wake,” but said Robinson “is starting to get a sense of what it’s like to have been a former friend of Donald Trump.”
He added: “From a political perspective, Donald Trump smells of rotting flesh better than anyone… And I bet, George, that before November 5th, he’s going to pretend he doesn’t even really know who Mark Robinson is.”
