“Several top staffers in North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign for governor have quit their posts, marking more fallout from a CNN report outlining evidence that he made disturbing posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago…

“The CNN report [last] Thursday unearthed past posts it said Robinson left on a porn site’s message boards in which he referred to himself as a ‘black NAZI;’ said he enjoyed transgender pornography; said in 2012 he preferred Hitler to then-President Barack Obama; and slammed the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as ‘worse than a maggot.’ Robinson denied writing the posts and said Thursday that he wouldn’t be forced out of the race by ‘salacious tabloid lies.’” AP News

Both sides are critical of Robinson, and note that primary voters were aware of previous incendiary comments:

“Way back in March, Robinson had already made comments that would have ended campaigns in a different political era. ‘I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote,’ Robinson told a group of female Republicans, all of whom can and do vote… He used the word ‘hogwash’ to describe Nazi genocide. He also likened Jewish bankers to ‘the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.’…

“Any one of these statements would have been disqualifying decades ago in any race — never mind one against a Jewish candidate (North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein)… Trump can win North Carolina without the Robinson distraction. But that won’t happen if a thoroughly discredited candidate is dragging him down… Robinson should do the right thing — after neglecting to do it by withdrawing by Thursday night’s deadline — and stop campaigning to be governor.”
A.G. Gancarski, New York Post

“Robinson’s talent as a controversy-courting shitposter goes a long way toward explaining his meteoric rise from working on the floor of various local furniture manufacturing plants to being praised by Trump as ‘Martin Luther King on steroids.’ He joined Facebook in 2007, where two themes soon emerged in his writing — a tortured relationship to being Black, and a rare knack for channeling the id of a gleefully trollish brand of online conservatism…

“He wrote posts ridiculing John Lewis for getting beaten bloody by Alabama State Troopers… On a niche conservative podcast, he went so far as to dismiss the ‘so-called civil rights movement’ outright, casting it as a Marxist ploy to undermine the free market. The sit-ins, he proclaimed, violated the autonomy of business owners, and if Black people were being denied service they should have simply eaten elsewhere… Most of these positions were public knowledge by the time Republican voters first started urging Robinson to run for office.”
Zak Cheney-Rice, New York Magazine

“Any political party can have its share of embarrassing, scandal-prone, and corrupt politicians. Certainly the Democrats—the party of John Edwards, Rod Blagojevich, and Robert Menendez—hold no high moral ground. But what is distinct about Robinson is that all his major faults were known to the party even as they elevated him. The CNN report has added many juicy new details that decorate the picture—but they don’t fundamentally change Robinson’s profile…

“As Christina Reynolds, vice president of communications at the feminist lobbying group Emily’s List, noted, ‘Let’s be clear, what came out today is terrible, but it fits with everything we’ve always known about Mark Robinson. They knew who he was and they supported him.’… If Robinson is now an albatross around the neck of the Republican Party, they did it to themselves.”
Jeet Heer, The Nation

“Yes, once again, Republican primary voters examined their options in a high-stakes competitive primary and rejected two ‘normie’ options — the two-term state treasurer and a veteran trial lawyer — in favor of an egregiously flawed candidate with easily foreseeable problems in a general election. Donald Trump’s early endorsement — he weighed in in June 2023, even though the primary was in March 2024! — effectively sealed the deal for Robinson…

“But this phenomenon long predates Trump and his MAGA movement… Before Trump there were Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Sharron Angle in Nevada in 2010 and Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana in 2012. All winnable races against vulnerable Democrats, all fumbled away by a GOP nominee with glaring problems in communication and character.”
Jim Geraghty, National Review

Other opinions below.