Former President and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had a question.
Ever since CNN reported that North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson posted on a porn site that he was a “black Nazi” who supported the re-enactment of slavery and called civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. “Martin Lucifer Coon,” Trump and his campaign have tried to gently distance the former president from his staunchly loyal ally, fearing that Robinson’s outrageous excesses could damage Trump himself.
In recent days, as the former president debated with aides and confidants what to do amid the fallout from the Robinson case, Trump also had a blunt inquiry for those in his political and social orbit, according to a source close to Trump and another person familiar with the matter.
He wanted to know if Robinson was mentally ill.
Trump had earlier gladly embraced the Tar Heel state's Republican candidate for governor, describing Robinson — in a statement that seems particularly bizarre in retrospect — as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
But Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are in the final weeks of this year’s unusually high-stakes presidential contest, with various local and national polls suggesting a close race likely to come down to the margins in a handful of states. For either camp, nothing is to be taken for granted, and every inch of improvement or scandal seems to matter.
Recent polling data has given the Harris campaign reason for cautious optimism in its uphill battle to beat Trump for North Carolina’s electoral votes. For Trump, the state is a must-win: Top Trump advisers have repeatedly told him Rolling Stone They see almost no plausible scenario for him to win the election. without Earlier this month, Trump's running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), told reporters: “It's very difficult for us to win unless we can win North Carolina.”
It’s unusual for a gubernatorial candidate to have such a significant impact on the electoral prospects of a party’s presidential candidate, especially someone as popular with the party’s base as Trump. But Robinson — who tried to dismiss the CNN article as “journalistic garbage” — represents a uniquely messy case.
The former president's influential allies and top campaign staff are certainly not ignoring his potential impact on the November election.
While the Robinson story was on air on CNN last week, several Trump aides began texting or calling high-level political contacts in North Carolina to ask if there were any other embarrassing rumors or whispers about additional explosive information about Robinson that the Trump team might not yet know about and could come to light during this election cycle, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
As of early this week, according to another person familiar with the matter, at least one major conservative organization was working on a new private poll in North Carolina — largely to see if Robinson was dragging down Trump’s numbers.
“This idiot could ruin this whole thing for us,” said one Republican close to Trump, who is actively working to bring him back to the White House. Rolling StoneThe person added that while he believed the former president would win North Carolina, “Black Hitler doesn't make it any easier!”
In a still-close presidential race, the former president is not running simply to revitalize his career and political legacy, or to implement an increasingly authoritarian and vengeful political vision. Trump is running, in many ways, to stay out of prison.
For Republican lawmakers and other Trump aides who want to return Trump to power next year, the main task has been to figure out exactly how to claim that Trump has nothing to do with the man with whom Trump had so much to do, in a conclusive and public manner.
“This is literally [Democrats’] “The Trump campaign in North Carolina is trying to make people think that Donald Trump was somehow involved with Robinson,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a prominent Trump ally, said on Fox News on Monday. “Donald Trump knew nothing about this. I knew nothing about this.” [Democrats are] “Attempting to prove guilt by association.”
At a recent rally in North Carolina, Trump didn’t even mention the lieutenant governor’s name. According to Trump advisers, there have been some internal conversations within the campaign about whether the former president should make a strong statement about Robinson — but so far, there’s no firm plan to do so or to withdraw his endorsement.
Trump confidants urged the president to get rid of Robinson entirely, but the former president did not take the advice and instead settled on a strategy of ignoring him, at least for now.
Vance, for his part, declined to commit in any way when asked if he believed Robinson's claims that he did not publish the comments reported by CNN. “I don't believe him, I don't believe him,” Vance said over the weekend.
Speaking at a rally in North Carolina on Monday, Vance said: “The sex scandal in North Carolina is between the lieutenant governor and the people of North Carolina. They will make their decision, and we support them.”
However, before the CNN story, Robinson was already a clearly far-right figure, and much of the Republican elite was fine with not only tolerating it, but promoting it.
At a campaign event in March, Trump said of Robinson: “I think you're better than Martin Luther King. I think you're Martin Luther King twice.”
not quite.
