Source: Editorial Board
State and national Republicans have known about Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, antisemitic, Islamophobic and racist social media posts and speeches for years now and seemingly had no issues with them as they very publicly supported him.
But now, these same Republicans are frantically trying to distance themselves from Robinson and some refuse to acknowledge his candidacy. Not so coincidentally, this began right after CNN’s KFile published an investigation into disturbing posts written years ago on a porn forum by Robinson.
In Robinson’s posts, he made such comments as calling himself “a black NAZI,” saying “Slavery is not bad” and “I wish they would bring it (slavery) back,” wrote about “peeping” on girls in the gym shower when he was younger and said he didn’t care if a celebrity had an abortion but he would “wanna see the sex tape!” Some of his other posts are so extreme and disturbing that the content can’t even be mentioned here. And yet, the North Carolina Republican Party is standing by their candidate.
In an official statement posted on the NCGOP’s Twitter account several hours after the news broke, they came out in support of Robinson, writing that he “categorically denied the allegations made by CNN” and then accused Democrats of trying “to smear Mark Robinson.” They did not condemn any of Robinson’s porn forum posts.
Multiple North Carolina Republicans, especially candidates who will appear on the ballot with Robinson, have scrubbed their social media of posts praising Robinson, CBS 17 reported. The TV station found that, just by performing a quick search, Rep. Virginia Foxx, GOP candidate for Labor Commissioner Luke Farley and GOP congressional candidate for NC-01 Laurie Buckhout had deleted their Robinson posts just hours after CNN’s story was released.
As Philip Shulman, States and Specials Projects communications director for American Bridge 21st Century told CBS 17, it’s simply too late in the game for Republicans to pretend they didn’t know the real Mark Robinson before the CNN report.
“Maybe this is finally the incident that makes people try to distance themselves from Mark Robinson,” he said. “But it’s too little, too late. The things that he has said, the things that he has done, the things they have just completely turned a blind eye to, that’s already happened. And I don’t know how they outrun that.”
Many of these Republicans have endorsed and campaigned with Robinson, posted photos of themselves with him, and spoken highly of him and his policies. They knew who Robinson was when they were posing for photos with him and had no issues backing him. It is foolish of them to think they can pretend to be shocked now because these candidates know deep down that Mark Robinson is exactly who they thought he was.
Attorney General and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein said much the same thing in a statement the day after the CNN investigation was released.
“To see him declare that he himself is a Nazi is incredibly disturbing. That is absolutely disqualifying. But, he has shown who he was before yesterday,” Stein said, adding, “He is not a normal candidate, and I refuse to normalize him.”
Speaking at an event hosted by the NC AFL-CIO, Gov. Roy Cooper also weighed in on the CNN report.
“[A]ll of these Republican leaders, including Donald Trump, who have supported him over the years, guess what? You reap what you sow,” he said.
The most important lesson from this story for Republicans – since they won’t change their core beliefs – is that the Internet is forever and they can’t hide their past actions.
“They can scrub their endorsements of Mark Robinson,” Shulman said. “They can try to be quiet about who Mark Robinson is, but the public knows who they are. I think, as Mark Robinson has learned, the internet is forever and those posts are still out there.”
