WASHINGTON — North Carolina GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson has had a rough go since Thursday’s CNN report laid out evidence that he’d made years of disturbing comments in a forum on a porn website, including references to himself as “a Black Nazi” and descriptions of being sexually aroused by spying on girls in public showers.
Robinson has denied the CNN story’s accuracy, calling it “false lies,” even though he suggested — in the same breath — that maybe those porn site comments were from him after all.
But just last week, the North Carolina Republican was describing himself very differently. In fact, he was comparing himself to “people in the Bible.”
Days before the bombshell story came out, Robinson, who is currently the state’s lieutenant governor, was at a North Carolina church telling people that God worked through biblical figures like King David of Israel — and then put himself in the same category as them.
“The one thing that always encourages me is studying the people in the Bible,” Robinson said in Sept. 15 remarks at the First Baptist Church Of Indian Trail.
“No matter whether they were hand-picked like David or whether they were thrust into situations, they weren’t perfect people,” he said. “But they were the perfect people for God to use at that time. And he worked with them where they were, and that’s what God is doing with me.”
The GOP gubernatorial candidate added that because God is working with him, he tries to “be convicted about the things that I do wrong.”
A Robinson campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The First Baptist Church Of Indian Trail previously posted a video of Robinson’s remarks on its Facebook page, but the video has since been deleted.
American Bridge, a Democratic research group, was able to pull a clip from the video before it was deleted. You can watch it here:
The rhetoric Robinson used in his church speech — the idea that he’s not perfect, but that God works through imperfect people — is language Republicans and right-leaning evangelicals have used for years to justify their support for former President Donald Trump, a twice-impeached convicted felon and adjudicated sexual abuser.
They’ve specifically, and erroneously, compared Trump to King David, just like Robinson did for himself.
Eight of Robinson’s campaign staffers resigned en masse after CNN’s report on his apparent comments came out. Raleigh outlet WRAL News reported Monday that one likely reason they called it quits is that Robinson refused supporters’ multiple offers to connect him with tech specialists who could look into how his username had appeared on the porn site. Apparently, seeing Robinson rebuff these offers sowed doubt among his staff that the posts weren’t his.
As shocking as the CNN report’s findings were, the North Carolina Republican has a long history of making sexist, racist, Islamophobic, transphobic and otherwise vile comments.
He’s also left up lots of ugly posts on social media under his name that he does not disavow, mostly from before he was a public figure. Some have certainly not aged well.
In one 2015 Facebook post, Robinson appears to be claiming the moral high ground while railing against people partaking in “perversion” — the same activity he seemingly claimed to enjoy in the porn site forum posts unearthed by CNN.
Specifically, CNN provides evidence that Robinson referred to himself as a “perv” who likes pornography with transgender people in it ― a stark contrast to his present-day transphobic rhetoric calling for trans women to be arrested for using women’s bathrooms.
“The TRUTH hurts,” he previously wrote on Facebook. “We sow seeds of violence, hatred, and perversion then wonder why we are reaping a harvest of violence, hatred, and perversion.”
Robinson is running for governor against Democrat Josh Stein, who is currently North Carolina’s attorney general. Stein was already leading in the polls, but since the CNN story dropped, his forecast has only improved. The Cook Political Report on Friday shifted its prediction for this governor’s race from “Leans Democrat” to “Likely Democrat.”