WILMINGTON, N.C. — Donald Trump made no mention of embattled North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson at a rally here Saturday, as Republicans privately worried that the pivotal state could be slipping away amid scrutiny of old comments on a porn site made by a user linked to Robinson.
During the former president’s speech, in which he repeated false claims that all jobs are going to undocumented immigrants and that Democrats “cheated” in the 2020 election, the former president stressed the importance of the Tar Heel State in his path to re-claiming the Oval Office. He touted his daughter-in-law’s ties to the state and said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley would be “looking for a job” if they lost North Carolina.
“We’re counting on this guy,” he said of Whatley, who was the state party chair in 2020. “Michael, you better win or you’re never going to be able to come back here.”
Trump added: “I think he’s going to win.”
Trump’s visit to Wilmington comes as he and Harris are tied in the state, according to The Washington Post’s polling average, where Democrats haven’t won a presidential election since Barack Obama in 2008. A Trump campaign official told reporters at a briefing last month that as long as Trump wins North Carolina, he just needs to win Georgia and Pennsylvania out of the other six swing states to win the White House.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, meanwhile, is seeking to tie Trump to Robinson, and released an ad featuring clips of Trump praising Robinson as “an unbelievable lieutenant governor” and “better than Martin Luther King.” The ad also includes a clip of Robinson saying “there’s no compromise on abortion.” Trump endorsed Robinson earlier this year.
Some Republicans fear the controversy surrounding Robinson could be a drag on the presidential race, as well as down-ballot races.
The state “is trending away from [Trump] but there is time to fix it,” a North Carolina Republican said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the race candidly. “A lot depends on how the campaign responds to the new Harris ad. Linking Trump and Robinson is going to hurt with suburban women.”
Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign was upended Thursday after CNN reported a porn site user linked to Robinson declared himself a “black Nazi,” among other racist and lewd comments. That same user, under the name “minisoldr,” also praised Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” Robinson denied writing the posts. But CNN found many links between Robinson and minisoldr, which matches Robinson’s username on public accounts and lists the user’s full name as “mark robinson.”
In a post on X, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Friday acknowledged the potential political damage of the Robinson allegations.
“If the reporting on Mark Robinson is a total media fabrication, he needs to take immediate legal action,” Tillis said. “If the reporting is true, he owes it to President Trump and every Republican to take accountability for his actions and put the future of NC & our party before himself.”
State GOP leaders continue to officially back Robinson, and Robinson and his allies are betting that many Republican voters are willing to brush aside even the most damaging allegations as “fake news.”
Still, some Republicans are worried. Senior state legislative leaders believed the news was likely to cost them their supermajority in the General Assembly and were continuing to pressure Robinson to drop from the race, the North Carolina Republican source said.
Trump won his narrowest victory in North Carolina in 2020, topping Biden by just 1.3 percentage points after beating Hillary Clinton by 3.6 percentage points four years earlier. Trump didn’t clear 50 percent in either year. Some Republicans in the state want Trump to distance himself from Robinson’s actions and want him to find a resonant issue to counter the appeal of Harris’s defense of abortion rights. Economic issues may also become less potent for Republicans in part because of rapidly declining gas prices.
Harris’s campaign is far better organized in North Carolina than President Joe Biden’s was four years ago, mostly because the Democrats ran virtually no door-to-door operation during the covid pandemic. This year’s organizing effort could lead to better Democratic turnout.
While Trump hasn’t addressed the Robinson allegations, his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), bashed the media while speaking at an event in Pennsylvania for focusing on “salacious scandals in other states,” rather than “the fact that Donald Trump was nearly assassinated.” Vance will be in Charlotte on Monday for campaign events.
At Trump’s rally Saturday, it was clear that many in the GOP base were ready to discredit and look past almost any allegation, dismissing unflattering stories as a media smear job. Standing in line for the Italian sausage stand, Ken Webb said he would vote for Robinson despite this week’s scandal.
“Who knows what’s true or not?” he said. “The media twists and they turn things around on everyone.”
A reporter noted that the porn site user linked to Robinson also described an affair with his wife’s sister and praised “Mein Kampf” as a “good read.” Asked if that concerned him, Webb said the most important thing was defeating Democrats. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein’s support for abortion rights was a dealbreaker, Webb said.
“As a Christian, abortion is not an option for me,” he added.
During his speech, Trump briefly touched on abortion, as he spoke about female voters in broad terms, at one point remarking that “women have been through a lot.” Under a second Trump administration, “You will no longer be thinking about abortion because it is now where it always had to be, with the states,” he told the crowd. Trump also made several baseless and hyperbolic claims, saying if Harris wins, “Israel will be gone and you won’t have autoworkers.” And he used dehumanizing language to talk about migrants, saying this “invasion is destroying the fabric of our country.”
Democrats were jubilant Friday at a state lawmaker’s “Bourbon and Bowties” fundraiser in Durham, attended by Gov. Roy Cooper (D) and Stein, running to succeed him. Over drinks on the patio, attendees chattered about the news stories surrounding Robinson and all but declared victory in the governor’s race.
“I have not followed the news at all,” Stein said a couple minutes into his speech. “Did anything happen, in the last few days, that I need to know about?”
People cackled. “You won!” a man yelled. “You won!”
“Lord help us all,” Stein said, the audience still laughing.
But later he got serious.
“The vision of our opponent in this race, the lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, is one of division, violence and hate,” Stein said. He ticked through Robinson’s “culture war” fights, his anti-gay comments and his declaration at a church that “we are called to be led by men” rather than women.
The crowd was no longer laughing.
Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report