By Ben Rappaport
Dot Gore knows Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has a history of making controversial comments. But Gore said she believes Robinson is a good person at his core, which is why she plans to vote for him for governor in November.
Robinson has drawn criticism for his remarks on abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and more. A report by CNN last month said Robinson made disturbing comments on a pornographic website more than a decade ago, including calling himself a “Black Nazi” and saying he peeped on women in a locker room as a teenager.
Republican support for Robinson dropped by 20 percentage points after the story was published, according to a poll released Sept. 30 by East Carolina University. But Gore and some other staunch Robinson supporters who attended a campaign stop in Columbus County on Tuesday said the media has crafted an unfair narrative in an effort to hurt his campaign.
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“I think it’s all a bunch of lies,” Gore, a 66-year-old retiree, said. “The media are for the Democrats, and they’re going to try their best to do him in, just like they did to Trump.”
Robinson has repeatedly denied the CNN report, calling it “salacious tabloid trash.” Some of the more than 70 supporters who gathered at Dale’s Seafood in Whiteville on Tuesday said they wondered if the comments on the pornography site were manipulated by artificial intelligence or created by Democratic operatives, although there is no evidence to suggest that was the case. Some brushed off the comments as stale.
“We’ve all said some things in our past that aren’t politically correct and that we wouldn’t say now,” said Wayne Cutchin, a 75-year-old retiree. “What they’re claiming he said is in the past anyway. Why should that affect how I feel about his policies now?”
During the campaign event, Robinson said the election should be about policy, not rhetoric. “The problem is we think we need to have politicians in office with sticker book smiles who are nice. That’s not what we need right now.”
Robinson hired a law firm, Binnall Law Group, to respond to the CNN report. In an interview with Fox News on Sept. 26, attorney Jesse Binnall said, “The voters need an answer before the election, and so we are going to move very quickly and still give them a very fulsome report.”
The law firm has yet to release any findings from its investigation. Absentee voting by mail is underway, and in-person early voting sites open next week.
“Be expecting some big news on that this week,” Robinson told the BBI on Tuesday. “Possibly a lawsuit.” He said he was prepared to “take these folks to task.”
Reporting by WRAL revealed Robinson rejected multiple offers from supporters to connect him with information technology specialists to help investigate CNN’s reporting.
“We don’t need to spend our time talking about some lies that supposedly happened 15 years ago,” Robinson said. “I find it quite ridiculous that reporters want to talk about tabloid lies and trash.”
Since the CNN report was published, the Republican Governors Association stopped its TV ads supporting Robinson, and a flurry of Robinson’s top campaign staffers have quit.
Trump, once a vocal Robinson supporter, has tried to distance himself from Robinson’s campaign. With North Carolina a battleground state, many Republicans fear Robinson’s trouble will hurt the top of the ticket.
