(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) “North Carolina is becoming like a second home to me,” quipped Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, during a stop Monday at Charlotte’s Central Piedmont Community College.
Indeed, he and former President Donald Trump have traversed the battleground state in recent weeks, with stops in Raleigh and Wilmington over the past five days as they push hard to defend a razor-thin lead in the final stretch of the presidential race.
For better or worse, Republicans fear that the second home for Vance—which also happens to be the home state of Republican National Committee co-chairs Michael Whatley and Lara Trump (the president’s daughter-in-law via Eric)—now comes with its own proverbial black sheep.
Neither the local leftist media nor a coalition of Christian conservatives was willing to let GOP officials attempt to memory-hole the state’s besmirched gubernatorial candidate, Mark Robinson, following a CNN smear attack last week.
Robinson, the state’s current lieutenant governor, is accused of having posted crude and offensive comments online between 2008 and 2012—roughly six years before he was propelled into politics by a viral video about gun rights.
“What he said or didn’t say is ultimately between him and the people of North Carolina,” Vance said in response to one of three media questions, all seeming to ask the same thing about where GOP leaders stood currently with respect to Robinson. “The people of North Carolina are gonna make that decision.”
Robinson, who is black, has denied unequivocally that the series of posts—including references to Nazism, slavery and transgenderism—came from him, and he has vowed to stay in the race, despite reported pressure from the Trump campaign last week to drop out for fear he could drag down other races on the ticket.
Thus far, however, Robinson’s popular support—among conservatives, at least—appeared to remain strong, with many of the Republican attendees at Vance’s events on Monday booing outside attacks on the gubernatorial candidate while also appearing to urge GOP officials to acknowledge and circle the wagons behind him.
The same was true on social media, where many of the comments coming from well-known conservative influencers also conveyed support, despite the predictable presence of leftist snipes and pearl-clutching—a flip-flop from a party that suddenly finds transgenderism and anti-Semitism objectionable after tacitly, if not overtly, embracing both, while often condemning criticism of black individuals with the caveat that those oppressed themselves cannot be “racist.”
The GOP needs to circle the wagons like the Democrats do. Lets get him across the finish line and figure out what to do on November 6th.
— @amuse (@amuse) September 23, 2024
Vance’s answers to media questions seemed to be the most direct response from the Trump campaign since the supposed scandal broke on Thursday.
“Now look, I’ve seen some statements,” said the vice-presidential candidate.
“I haven’t seen them all—some of them were pretty gross, to put it mildly,” he continued. “Mark Robinson says that those statements are false and he didn’t actually speak them, so I think it’s up to Mark Robinson to make his case to the people of North Carolina…”
The crowd erupted in applause as Vance expressed his measured and qualified support for the top GOP state leader before trying to shift the focus from Robinson onto the media itself for its preoccupation with the topic.
“I gotta say that this entire episode illustrates something that is fundamentally broken about the American media,” Vance said.
“You’ve got in this country right now, a record number of Americans who are dying of fentanyl overdoses thanks to Kamala Harris’s policies. You’ve got a record number of young Americans who can’t afford to buy a home thanks to Kamala Harris’s policies. And you’ve got a record number of Americans who are struggling to buy groceries thanks to Kamala Harris’s policies,” he continued. “The media oughta focus on Kamala Harris and her failure.”
However, that effort to refocus only led more reporters to double down on asking Robertson follow-ups, with two additional questions sounding much the same as the first one, eliciting more peevish responses toward Vance directed toward the journalists themselves.
At a separate event later that evening, prior to Vance taking the stage, Whatley, the current RNC co-chair and former state-level GOP chair in North Carolina, pointedly snubbed Robinson in his own remarks.
“We need more men and women of faith in public office, in North Carolina and across this country,” Whatley said, proceeding to list several other races while clumsily skipping over the gubernatorial race.
At least twice, people in the audience loudly shouted Robinson’s name, but Whatley proceeded to ignore them.
The event, which was specifically geared toward Christian conservatives, took place at Freedom House Church, in a room that, just two years prior, Robinson had delivered the keynote address for the Faith and Freedom coalition’s “Salt and Light” conference, a multi-day event that brought several prominent political and conservative evangelical figures to the stage.
Meanwhile, Robinson said during a campaign stop in Wilkesboro that he planned to lawyer up against CNN and any others involved in what he maintained was a hoax to smear his good name.
I am in the process of retaining aggressive legal counsel to investigate who did this and how; we will leave no stone unturned, and will use every legal means to hold CNN accountable for perpetrating these lies.
I am not backing down, the future of North Carolina depends on it.… pic.twitter.com/Lb9xuvF5Au
— Mark Robinson (@markrobinsonNC) September 23, 2024
Over the weekend, most of his campaign staff quit, leaving only two spokespeople and a security guard, according to a report by Axios.
Already, the lieutenant governor, known for his fiery and provocative rhetoric, had appeared to be trailing in polls to state Attorney General Josh Stein, leaving some to suspect that the GOP and Trump campaign were all too eager to cut bait when the scandal broke.
Nonetheless, supporters see similarities between the attack on Robinson and past character attacks on Trump—most notably the October 2016 Access Hollywood smear just a month before his victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Even if the posts from Robinson did prove to be his, some argue that the situation has been blown out of proportion, applying a blatant double-standard to Robinson, who would be the state’s first black governor if elected.
He's a grown man who WAS addicted before turning his life around. Isn't that a story of triumph? They should be running ads all over TV screens. That story makes him more relatable to people
— George (@BehizyTweets) September 23, 2024
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
