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Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina and current lieutenant governor of the state, spent years making extreme and embarrassing comments on a porn forum, according to a new report from CNN Thursday. And while Robinson is denying the comments are actually his and Gizmodo can’t independently confirm their accuracy, CNN provides some compelling evidence, including the fact that Robinson apparently used his real full name.
The controversial comments were made under the username “minisoldr” from 2008-2012 on a site called Nude Africa, which has the aesthetics of a 1990s Geocities site. CNN notes that Robinson used the name minisoldr elsewhere on the internet. The report notes accounts on YouTube, X, and Pinterest that share the name.
So what kind of comments was Robinson allegedly making? The lieutenant governor appears to express a desire to own slaves, calls himself a “black Nazi,” and rails against the installation of a monument to civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., writing, “Get that f*cking commie bastard off the National Mall!”
Robinson, who has previously called LGBTQ people “filth” in 2023, also appears to repeatedly use anti-gay slurs and expressed an interest in trans porn in the comments, according to CNN.
“I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson allegedly wrote. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”
It’s not immediately clear if CNN chose to censor the word “fucking” or if that’s how it was originally written. It’s made all the more confusing by the fact that Robinson appears to have put scare quotes around the word “perv” in his post about trans people.
The site Robinson was allegedly commenting on boasts that it has all of Nude Africa’s archives dating to 1998, which makes so much sense when you look at the site’s visual style. It’s a sparse site with antiquated fonts and a bizarre layout. The entire vibe is 1990s web chic. But, again, Robinson denies the comments made on the porn site from 2008-2012 are his.
“This is not us. These are not our words. And this is not anything that is characteristic of me,” Robinson said, according to CNN, though it’s unclear why he would say “us” and “our” when talking about himself.
There have been calls for Robinson to drop out of his race for governor, perhaps largely driven by the fact that he’s behind in many polls against Democratic challenger, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein. Robinson is trailing Stein by double digits in most polls, according to FiveThirtyEight. But Robinson told CNN in a segment that aired Thursday he had no plans to drop out.
Robinson: We are not getting out of this race.. We don’t want a Governor that can’t be counted on to tell the truth pic.twitter.com/677dQw4fY2
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 19, 2024
Robinson has been a controversial candidate from the start, suggesting that he’d like to return to a time before women could vote. Robinson also shared extremely antisemitic ideas, quoting Adolf Hitler and dabbling in some light Holocaust denial. He later expressed some regret about those comments writing a non-apology in his memoir, according to People magazine, saying “It did come out wrong. I knew the truth of what I was trying to say, but I should have chosen different words.”
Robinson also supports a complete ban on abortion, though he apologized for paying for his wife’s abortion in the 1980s. Republican presidential candidate and convicted felon Donald Trump has previously celebrated Robinson, telling a rally back in March that he was “Martin Luther King on steroids” and “Martin Luther King times two,” according to footage from the event.
It’s unclear if this latest controversy will cause Robinson to drop out. But it’d be pretty wild if this was the thing that did it. It’s not like Robinson’s previous controversies were any less insane.
