North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson denied he’s leaving the race for governor as a bombshell report from CNN is expected to drop and compared himself to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
It’s unclear what the new information entails, but several outlets reported anonymous sources saying Republican officials were pushing Robinson to drop out. The anticipated report comes less than two months before the North Carolina gubernatorial election, which is a close race between Robinson and North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democrat nominee.
On Thursday, Robinson posted a video to X, formerly known as Twitter, accusing Stein of leaking the story to CNN and denying the claims made in the story were true. He didn’t specify, but said, “Those are not the words of Mark Robinson,” and chalked the story up to “tabloid trash.”
Robinson appeared to downplay the significance of the article and said he’s not the first person to be in this position.
“Clarence Thomas famously once said he was the victim of high-tech lynching,” Robinson said. “Well, it looks like Mark Robinson is too.”
Thomas made the comment in 1991 during his confirmation hearing after then-Senator Joe Biden asked if he had anything he wanted to say in response to the accusations from Anita Hill. Hill accused Thomas of sexually harassing her while she worked as an adviser to him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
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Thomas denied the claims made against him and called the hearing a “national disgrace.” He accused members of Congress’ staff members of searching for “dirt” on him and leaking it to the media.
“And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you,” Thomas said. “You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S.—U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.”
In the CNN article about Robinson, he’s accused of referring to himself as a “black Nazi” and expressing support for reinstating slavery. The comments were allegedly made on Nude Africa, a pornographic website, message board over a decade ago.
Robinson also allegedly bragged about spying on women bathing in public showers and admitted to watching transgender pornography.
The North Carolina Republican has come out adamantly against allowing transgender women to use female bathrooms and against transgender women competing in women’s sports.
Robinson is trailing in polls in North Carolina’s governor race by about 8 points and his campaign has been plagued by controversial statements from his past. In early September, Robinson was accused of being a regular visitor to a pornography store in the 1990s and early 2000s, according to The Assembly, a North Carolina publication. Robinson called the story false.
In 2019, Robinson said abortion in America was because someone wasn’t “responsible enough to keep your skirt down” and called students from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School who advocated for gun control after the shooting “spoiled.”
If he wins, he’d be the first Black governor in North Carolina, and conservative voters, so far, have been open to forgiving the things he said.
“He’s a good speaker. He made some mistakes in his past,” Allan Jones, a 59-year-old truck driver, told the Associated Press at a campaign event in August. “Haven’t we all? Did we learn from them? Let’s go forward.”
Robinson’s also gotten the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, who called him “Martin Luther King, Jr. on steroids.” The lieutenant governor allegedly disparaged King on the messaging board, calling him a “commie bastard.”
“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 allegedly said in response to accusations that he’s a white supremacist, according to CNN.
In his video posted on X, Robinson said he’s staying in the race and maintained that he could win the election with the help of his supporters.
