Trumpworld Scrambles to Assess How Much ‘Dumbass’ Mark Robinson Will Hurt Them
Former president and 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump had a question.
Ever since CNN reported that North Carolina’s lieutenant governor Mark Robinson posted on a pornography website that he’s a “black NAZI” who supported re-legalizing slavery and dubbed civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. “Martin Lucifer Koon,” Trump and his campaign have tried to gently distance the ex-president from his staunchly MAGAfied ally, fearing Robinson’s extreme excesses could damage Trump himself.
In recent days, as the former president has discussed with aides and confidants what to do amid the Robinson fallout, Trump also had a blunt query for those in his political and social orbit, according to a source close to Trump and another person familiar with the matter.
He wanted to know if Robinson was mentally ill.
Trump had previously heartily embraced the Tar Heel State’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, describing Robinson — in a statement that looks especially peculiar in retrospect — as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
But Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are in the final-weeks sprint of this year’s extraordinarly high-stakes presidential contest, and various battleground and national polls point to a tight race that will likely come down to the margins in a tiny number of states. For both camps, nothing is to be taken for granted, and every inch of improvement or scandal seems to matter a great deal.
Recent polling data has given the Harris campaign reason for cautious optimism in their uphill fight to best Trump for North Carolina’s electoral college votes. For Trump, the state is a must-win: Top advisers to Trump have repeatedly told Rolling Stone that they see virtually no plausible scenario in which he wins the election without keeping North Carolina in his corner. Earlier this month, Trump’s vice presidential pick, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), told reporters that “it’s very hard for us to win unless we’re able to get North Carolina.”
It is unusual that a gubernatorial candidate would have a dramatic effect on the electoral prospects of a party’s presidential nominee, particularly one who is as popular among the party’s base as Trump. Still, Robinson — who has attempted to dismiss CNN’s article as “tabloid trash” — is a uniquely shambolic case.
Influential allies to the former president and his campaign’s senior staff certainly aren’t shrugging off his potential impact on the election in November.
As the CNN story was breaking last week, multiple Trump lieutenants began messaging or calling well-placed political contacts in North Carolina to ask if there were any other embarrassing rumors or whispers of additional explosive information regarding Robinson that Team Trump may not know about yet and that may come out during this election cycle, two sources with knowledge of the matter say.
As of early this week, according to a different person with knowledge of the matter, at least one major conservative organization was working to run a new private poll in North Carolina — largely to find if Robinson is dragging down Trump’s numbers.
“This dumbass could… wreck this whole thing for us,” one Republican close to Trump, who is actively working to put him back in the White House, lamented to Rolling Stone. This person added though they believe the ex-president will win North Carolina, “Black Hitler doesn’t make it fucking easier!”
In a presidential race that remains stubbornly close, the former president is not just running to revitalize his career and political legacy, or to enact an increasingly authoritarian, vengeance–obsessed policy vision. Trump is, in many ways, running to stay out of prison.
And for the Republican lawmakers and other Trump associates who want to return Trump to power next year, a key task has been to figure out how, exactly, to claim that Trump has nothing to do with this man with whom Trump had, emphatically and publicly, a lot to do.
“That’s literally [Democrats’] campaign in North Carolina, is trying to make people believe that Donald Trump somehow is involved with the Robinson guy,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a prominent Trump ally, said on Fox News on Monday. “Donald Trump knew nothing about this. I knew nothing about it. [Democrats are] trying to guilt by association.”
At a recent North Carolina rally, Trump conspicuously did not even mention the lieutenant governor’s name. According to Trump advisers, there has been some internal conversation within the campaign about whether the former president should make a forceful statement about Robinson — but so far, there is no confirmed plan to do so or to revoke his endorsement.
Others close to Trump have urged him to dump Robinson altogether, but the ex-president is not taking the advice and instead settling on a strategy of ignoring him, at least for the moment.
Vance, for his part, refused to commit one way or another when he was asked if he trusts Robinson’s claims that he did not post the comments reported by CNN. “I don’t not believe him, I don’t believe him,” Vance said over the weekend.
Speaking at a North Carolina rally on Monday, Vance said: “A sex scandal in North Carolina is between the lieutenant governor and the people of North Carolina. They’re going to make their decision, and we support them.”
Still, before the CNN story, Robinson was already an ostentatiously far-right figure who much of the Republican elite was fine with not just tolerating, but championing.
“I think you’re better than Martin Luther King,” Trump said of Robinson at a campaign event in March. “I think you are Martin Luther King times two.”
Not quite.
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