(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Denouncing what appeared to be another “high-tech lynching” on par with then-Sen. Joe Biden’s slanderous campaign against future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson said he would not be pressured to exit the gubernatorial race over reports about controversial posts he is accused of having made between 2008 and 2012.
“You all have seen the half-truths and outright lies of Josh Stein on his ads over and over again,” Robinson said in a video posted to his X account, referring to his Democrat opponent, the current state attorney general.
“A story leaked by him to CNN is appearing now,” Robinson added. “Let me reassure you, the things that you will see in that story—those are not the words of Mark Robinson.”
Nonetheless, Robinson—who already was trailing in the polls—appears to be fighting for his political life.
Several state-level Republicans have repudiated him, and the Trump campaign was also allegedly pressuring him, delivering the ultimatum that Robinson would be exiled from the former president’s orbit out of concern that he could drag Trump down politically and, potentially, help deliver North Carolina to Vice President Kamala Harris.
The rumors of the story began building well before the story itself on Thursday, leading Robinson’s name to trend as multiple memes sprung up about the anticipation alone.
Leaks hinted at something salacious involving Robinson’s interaction on porn sites in the 2000s.
However, to the relief of many, the portly populist was not himself featured in any of them. Rather, CNN’s hit piece alleged that during the Obama presidency, Robinson—still years from envisioning any sort of future political career—allegedly made a series of trolling, over-the-top remarks on websites, some of which were racy.
Robinson dedicates a full chapter of his 2022 memoir, We Are the Majority! to his history of making controversial posts—many of which were intentionally inflammatory or provocative—in the Wild West era of social media.
He acknowledges having received a comeuppance over one unfortunately worded post that he said he now regrets, which pointed out that Marvel’s Black Panther was a “fictional ‘hero’ created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by a satanic Marxist.”
He then made reference to a line from legendary comedian Mel Brooks that “if you want to get the shekels, you got to know who you are playing to,” according to Robinson’s paraphrasing.
“… People took it the wrong way, and I can see why people took it the wrong way,” Robinson wrote. “It came off the wrong way. When people called me and asked about it, that’s what I told them. And I apologized to them.”
Ironically, Democrats who have spent the past three years celebrating—and trying to normalize—transgenderism, anti-Semitism and abortion now find themselves attempting to justify the shaming of a black man for allegedly embracing those very attributes, albeit in a decade-old cybercommunity.
The reason, of course, is that Mark Robinson is the wrong type of black man—one who is not subservient to their agenda and groupthink, who says things that challenge other minorities to rethink their worldviews also. A dangerous man for the Establishment.
Robinson’s race against Stein has exemplified the MAGA spirit in ways that make the Left deeply uncomfortable by inverting their typical racial framework.
Unlike the Harvard-educated Stein, Robinson came from humble beginnings, the product of a family that, at times, barely scraped by.
Although his powerful voice and oratory skills, along with his leadership qualities, were evident from early on, he was never groomed to be a member of the elite ruling class. Instead, he went from the Army to fast-food service to furniture maker to daycare operator until a viral video catapulted him to fame.
Robinson is now reportedly facing intense pressure internally to withdraw before a Thursday deadline lapses—even though his name would still be on the ballot.
According to the Carolina Journal, which broke the story about CNN’s planned smear attack, he was disinvited from a speaking slot at an event Thursday with JD Vance in the state capital of Raleigh.
The scandal calls to mind Trump’s own trial by fire, the notorious Access Hollywood tape in which he was recorded boasting to the cousin of former campaign rival Jeb Bush about grabbing women by the p***y.
As with Robinson, Trump appeared at the time to be trailing in the polls, and the media echo chamber left feckless Republicans convinced that he was dead in the water.
And, like Trump, Robinson will continue to fight, fight, fight even as critics accuse him of dragging the party down.
Surely Trump’s campaign must see the parallels, and to get weak-kneed now over this tempest in a teapot is far more undermining to the MAGA movement than any muck that the Democrats can sling.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.
