The Trump-endorsed Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, either went nuts, is nuts, or has been nuts all along. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski reported that Robinson called himself a “black NAZI” and a “perv” online, boasted about sneaking looks at nude women in public showers, loving pornography (“I like watching tranny-on-girl porn! That’s fucking hot!”) and reinstituting slavery. “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few,” the black politician wrote. All of this was on Nude Africa, a message board for sharing porn.
Naturally, Robinson is denying everything, says he won’t be forced out of the race, yada-yada. He’s an idiot. Be proud, Republicans! How do utter jerks like Robinson—although he does appear to be a very special kind of jerk— keep getting nominated and elected? The parties don’t vet them, the media doesn’t vet them, and the public doesn’t check on what it is voting for either until the damage is done.
May I also suggest that Donald Trump try to have someone on staff perform a little due diligence on such characters before he endorses them?
We’re saving democracy for this?
Ethics Alarms 
Now lots of politicians have explained away inconvenient posts with ‘my account was hacked’ in dubious cases. However, if he said his account was hacked or it wasn’t his account, I might give this one some consideration. That is insane enough that no rational person would do that outside of some kind of parody or satire. If this is really him, that is ‘Coocoo for Cocoa Puffs’-level stuff and he probably needs some professional help.
“Probably”? There are still people who think what they post on line is safe from unwanted discovery. There’s even a term for such people: morons.
First…
Second.
After my recent jury duty and seeing as a part of a jury how cancel culture operates in their efforts to destroy those they oppose, I’m going to say this very pointedly and very clearly that Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY not GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCNET! I got to see how cancel culture works in that criminal trial and to what extent those that engage in canceling others will go to destroy their target.
I personally know a long term local politician who’s political career was literally destroyed because of absolutely false accusation that was made by those that politically opposed him at the 11th hour of an election cycle and the verifiable truth was intentionally hidden from the public until after the election was over and he was voted out of office.
I could be wrong, but this sounds to me like another typical 11th hour smear that is specifically fabricated to destroy the career of a Republican politician.
That level of smear would result in a defamation suit and a successful one. The allegations are so astounding that I would be shocked if they weren’t accurate, and the guy’s sputtering denial wasn’t exactly confidence-inspiring. There are some really bad candidates out there. And he was losing anyway. You don’t drop an atom bomb on Guam….
This guy might be a real dirt bag, a genuine moron, and guilty as sin of everything that he is accused of, but, he is still innocent until proven guilty.
After witnessing the extents that cancel culture will go to to fabricate their smears to completely destroy someone they oppose, especially someone endorsed by Trump, I won’t put anything past them, absolutely nothing. These people are morally bankrupt.
It’s not a criminal trial, Steve, and past bad acts are not ruled out of evidence. He was guilty of being an absurd, wild-eyed flame-throwing Right wing nut before these latest claims.
Is this the denial you’re referring to?
Yup. Totally incredible given his history. The Times story about this mess has this paragraph: “But with Mr. Trump preparing to visit North Carolina for a rally on Saturday, he’s expected to talk about the controversy in passing, either on his Truth Social platform or once he’s in the state. People close to him anticipate that he will deliver a version of a comment he has made about countless supporters or former aides: that he hardly knows the guy.”
I HOPE he hardly knows the guy, and then the question is raised, “Why endorse a candidate whom you hardly know?” It’s reckless and foolish, as well as irresponsible.
More from that article: “You have to cherish him,” Mr. Trump once said. “He’s like a fine wine.” The guy once said that the 6,000,000 number of murdered Jews was “a bunch of hogwash.” Writing that as an adult, even once, is signature significance, for anyone who does that, says it or thinks it has something seriously wrong with them, and I think they should be cancelled as far as public life is concerned
Jack wrote, “The allegations are so astounding that I would be shocked if they weren’t accurate…”
That’s exactly how cancel culture works, turn plausible accusations that are 100% based on circumstantial evidence into something that’s so astounding that people would be shocked if it wasn’t accurate. The propaganda did its job, guilty until proven innocent.
Neither of us actually know if it’s true beyond reasonable doubt.
Jack wrote, “There are some really bad candidates out there.“
Yes, there are far too many bad ones out there. I honestly don’t know if Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is one of them but at this point I’m not willing to say he is based on these 11th hour accusations.
Jack wrote, “…he was losing anyway.“
Take in context; am I off base a bit here or does that sound a little like some form of rationalization?
What it means is: This isn’t a candidate who is threatening to overturn the republic, but a marginal, foot-in-mouth MAGA candidate who was foolishly chosen by primary voters and, like so many of the others, turned out to be a freak. The MSM doesn’t waste possible embarrassing false accusations when a candidate is going to lose anyway. That’s really stupid. Hunter’s laptop was a possible election-changer, and thus worth lying about and coming back later and saying “Oops!”
Have you followed this guy at all? In my book, the fact that he has declared abortion to be “murder” in the most inflammatory terms and then admitted later that he had his girlfriend have an abortion is just about enough for me to mark him a loose cannon. By his own standards, he’s a murderer, and murder is a crime that should disqualify leaders.
He also has a background of making inflammatory anti-Jewish statements, like claiming claimed that the movie “Black Panther” (not a bad film) was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists” that was “only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.” He’s engaged in Holocaust denial: with this as in all of the other stupid things he’s said, his defense was “poor choice of words.” He’s a far-right bomb-thrower, essentially, who makes Trump look prudent. He makes Marjorie Taylor Greene look responsible.
Just as he’s the wrong metaphorical hill for the Axis to die on, he’s a bad hill for anyone who distrusts the Axis to defend. WITHOUT the latest revelations—which sound exactly like the kind of thing this moron would write—he was already disqualified for rabid rhetoric and exactly the kind of extreme characterizations that let dangerous, slightly less idiotic people like Kamala Harris win elections.
Jack
This is not what I have heard from him. I have listened to his speeches and what you have described is not what I derived from his statements. Perhaps you have heard things I have not and Holocaust deniers don’t sit well with me but this is not something I have heard.
His stance on abortion today can be different than that when he was in his twenties. To claim this is hypocritical means that pro choice people can never change their opinion on a subject. In fact, my position on the subject has been moved closer to pro life by your analysis of the issue.
Nonetheless, this revelation is suspicious given its timing. Why were these not brought up when he ran for lieutenant governor.
I will reevaluate my position upon checking on the items you listed
If you say that abortion is murder, which is extreme and no more true than claiming war is murder, and you have been involved in an abortion, you are at least obligated to demonstrate that you really believe in your extreme rhetoric, what murder means, and how one shows contrition for engaging in it, OR one has to admit that one’s position is only serious when it affects others.
So much has been raised about this character already that all the most recent revelations were is frosting on the cake. I bet there’s more out there.
Many use the term murder without fully understanding the legal definition. I treat that as hyperbole. Had he said homicide would that have been better? Some would say that is also incorrect because the fetus is merely a clump of cells.
I took a look at the references used on the Wiki page that are used to support the antisemitism claims. One I believe was in the Jewish Times in NC in which the claim that the Globalists and the Rothschilds along with China were part of the 4 horseman of the apocalypse were attributed to him but were instead stated by some loon clergyman Sean Moon he was interviewing and because he did not “blatantly” challenge the assertion but just “grunted” he was assumed to agree with the claim. How many of our news people do the very same thing when presented with any of the “big lies”? Not a rationalization but unless it is a debate most of us would just think what a loon. Obama’s chief spiritual guide said many equivalent statements with no Obama pushback and Trayon White of DC’s council said that the Rothschilds controlled the climate. Not any denunciation from anyone.
The story frequently used the term “right wing” to describe various candidates and made numerous swipes at Trump which tells me a great deal about the writer’s biases. Nowhere in the article were any direct quotes by Robinson or even paraphrases that we can evaluate. The article just said he had a history of antisemitic remarks.
I will continue to go through many of the references in which claims about his remarks are justified in the Wiki piece before I render judgement. Salacious headlines with the the details behind a paywall do not constitute evidence in my book. Just the other day our local paper The Herald Mail – published by USA Today ran the Headline “Trump Attack Foiled. Not “Attack on Trump Foiled” . The former suggests Trump planning an attack while the other means Trump was to be the target of an attack.
I can no longer trust the claims of others regarding any candidate left or right without seeing the claimed quotes in the original state.
It is unfortunate that I am at this point because it requires far more work to track down every claim. I believe that the game plan by some is to hurl dirt everywhere so you get tired of chasing down what is true or not and simply allowing you preferred biases to guide you. That does not make for as healthy society. My goal is not to be deterred in determining what is true and what is not.
I don’t think Robinson can be let off the hook by the “murder as hyperbole” excuse. In 2018, Robinson wrote that abortion was “genocide” and “murder.” In 2019, Robinson described abortion as a “child sacrifice”.
In 2021, Robinson said in a church: “If you kill that young’un. It is murder. You got blood on your hands.”
He’s talking murder, not homicide.
Jack asked, “Have you followed this guy at all?”
My answer to that is no, and because of that I don’t have any preconceived bias towards him that others may have.
In my opinion, the man deserves the same universal human consideration that we offer others, that he is innocent of these accusations, regardless of his past, until it has been proven that he is guilty of the accusations. They have not presented any actual evidence that directly links him to the comments posted, it’s 100% correlation equals causation circumstantial evidence.
Yup, I know this isn’t a criminal trial, but still I have my base moral standards that I must uphold otherwise my integrity will begin to suffer.
We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one.
I don’t mind disagreeing; I don’t understand a reluctance to “cancel” someone who should have been cancelled already. Based on what this guy has been quoted as saying over the years, the recent revelations barely move the needle. Assessing character is a cumulative process: is it fair to assume that past documented evidence of a politician doing X unethical conduct and expressing Y unethical beliefs makes it substantially more likely that subsequent allegations are fair and accurate? Similarly, is it fair to assume a reporter of a sort-of legitimate news source like CNN would get that far out on a branch to smear someone like Robinson who is pre-smeared by his own words?
Jack wrote, “I don’t understand a reluctance to “cancel” someone who should have been cancelled already…”
…and I don’t understand the rush to cancel someone based on unproven correlation equals causation circumstantial evidence.
How is that “correlation equals causation”? The guy said, verifiably, that the movie “Black Panther” (not a bad film) was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxists” that was “only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.” His quote about the Holocaust figures being inflated is also verified. What does that have to do with “correlation/causation”? Those two statements alone prove that the man is irresponsible and says objectively vile things. If it is established that he says vile things, then it is more likely that other vile things attributed to him were probably said. That’s not causation/correlation. That’s “pattern of conduct.”
You realize this is the mirror image of the Hunter Biden laptop situation. That account, which was credible in part because of what was on the laptop and what we knew of Hunter, was denied by Democrats because it came from the NY Post, a conservative publication. You’re denying a damning report from a left-biased publication that is similarly credible, despite what we already know about the candidate.
What?
The unproven correlation equals causation circumstantial evidence that I’m talking about are the not so uncommon phrases made on the Nude Africa message board, the duplicated “minisoldr” moniker used on the Nude Africa message board, duplicated email address used on the Nude Africa message board. All these things have been reported as being the one and only Mark Robinson and they’re reporting it as fact and these things have not been directly linked to Mark Robinson only correlated to similar things that are provable to be Mark Robinson. What they are presenting as facts that prove the Nude Africa commenter was Mark Robinson are not verifiable facts that it was Mark Robinson’s commenting. Right now it’s correlation equals causation circumstantial evidence and it will remain that way until they prove that it was actually Mark Robinson, similar rhetorical patterns can be powerful arguments but they truly are circumstantial.
The kind of things that were used in the Nude Africa message board can be, and are quite routinely, duplicated by morally bankrupt people that are out to smear someone they disagree with in an effort to destroy them. I witnessed fact based evidence in the recent jury trial that I was part of that shows how these people hide their identities and make it look like someone else is saying and doing things. I don’t know that that is what happened in this case but it is very possible using spoofing technology, thus is the basis for reasonable doubt.
I will not condemn Mark Robinson as guilty for what was written on the Nude Africa discussion forum based on correlation equals causation evidence that can be created by unscrupulous individuals, the fact that they have not been able to directly link Mark Robinson to those comments is reasonable doubt enough for me at this point in time. If at a later date they report some actual provable direct links to Mark Robinson then my opinion will be adjusted based on new evidence, until then my opinion stands firm.
Side Note: Some years ago I used the moniker srwspoon for a few things online, I found out that that moniker has been used by many people across the USA on different discussion forums who weren’t me. Around fifteen years ago my email address was used in some spammed phishing scheme and it wasn’t me, it took some doing to get my email address cleared and reinstated.
That’s still not an “correlation equals causation” fallacy. Causation isn’t at issue at all: nothing’s “caused” anything. Correlation is that the same name is attached to the same kind of inappropriate comments for an elected official that this official had verifiably made in the past. Those are two data points that are connected. Even if the argument is that this Mark Robinson isn’t the real Mark Robinson, we do know that the real Mark Robinson has in fact made similarly outrageous comments. (The same guy who denied Holocaust statistics referring to himself as a “black Nazi” is hardly a stretch.) It doesn’t meet a beyond a reasonable doubt standard, but it easily gets to a preponderance of the evidence standard—and in judging the character of public figures, that the standard we usually have to use.
Okay, maybe I’m misapplying the correlation equals causation fallacy in that regard, but the correlation as I’ve discussed has certainly “caused” people to jump on the anti Robinson bandwagon and disregard the moral responsibility to require real proof before condemning Robinson for something he may not have done.
This whole thing sounds like a straw that broke the camel’s back kind of piling on, and people have allowed correlation and bias to judge instead of proof. What if It’s proven that Robinson didn’t make the comments on Nude Africa you’re wrong to condemn him for it? Yes, I know that’s proving a negative. As I’d already stated, if real proof, not just correlation, is produced that definitively links Robinson to the comments then I must reevaluate my position.
Feel free to condemn him for what’s actually provable but not what hasn’t been proven!
That’s fair. This is another one of Trump’s irresponsible picks who may help the GOP lose the Presidential election, and his record before the latest set of allegations was already disqualifying. This reminds me of the Herschel Walker debacle, except that the drip-drip-drips on him were undeniable.
Great thoughts, Steve. BTW, I followed the link and read your jury-duty piece, because I served on a civil case in May 2023. Wow! You did a great job recounting your experience and I thought your conclusion and summary were spot-on. Thanks for sharing!
How reliably credible is this reporter and this all is located on some obscure porn site called Nude Africa? Seems fishy to me. Let me rephrase it.
This has all the hallmarks of a Progressive Leftist smear campaign.
“CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski reported that Robinson called himself a “black NAZI” and a “perv” online, boasted about sneaking looks at nude women in public showers, loving pornography (“I like watching tranny-on-girl porn! That’s fucking hot!”) and reinstituting slavery. “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few,” the black politician wrote. All of this was on Nude Africa, a message board for sharing porn.”
Mark Robinson has demonstrated that he is a strong willed Black male Republican who does not shy away from speaking his mind. I have listened to his speeches and for lack of a better way of saying he has the spine and charisma of Trump and has the oration skills of Obama. He is a threat to the Democrat party. They fear him because he serves as a role model for Black men. He does not suffer fools gladly and for that reason he must be destroyed as Trump must be destroyed.
CNN has for years given negative coverage to Robinson. CNN claimed he mocked the students killed a Marjorie Stoneman Douglas when he criticized David Hogg for spouting off on matters Hogg did not fully understand. I believe our host did the same. He is anti – abortion now but when his then girlfriend/now wife had one twenty plus years ago it is used to call him a hypocrite today. Keep in mind that Obama evolved on various issues.
He is currently running for Governor yet these supposed remarks were made during Obama’s first administration and are only surfacing now. He was elected as the Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina. Why now? CNN’s claims vetting the integrity of the posts relied on an account with his name on it, a pseudonym he has used in the past along with his address and some unusual colloquialisms Robinson used in his Facebook account and similar ones found on the Nude Africa message board. One of these was “I don’t give two shakes. . .” about an issue. Kacznski should get out more as that is not an idiomatic expression that is all that unique. Others such as “#gagamaggot” or “frogs fat behind/ass” is the rural equivalent of the more urban idiom rat’s ass. Kaczynski saw the use of these idiom expressions on the message board and his Facebook page as evidence. Anyone with the knowledge of any of that data could fake an account. That is the data CNN used to corroborate the posts.
It is not that difficult. Someone recently made a video of Harris using AI to have herself call herself a DEI hire and other negative statements. Just how much do you think it would cost to bribe a webmaster of a sex site to drop a few jewels of slander on someone into the mix. Gavin Newsome got a court to enjoin anyone from using AI to make election related videos.
Assume for a moment that Jack Marshall was an unethical blogger. He has each of our actual names, email addresses and handles. It would take little effort by him to get more background information on us by him. It would not take much if a hacker wanted to get that info either. When Grace passed, looked up his home address on the Internet to send him a condolence card.
Create an account under the others name on a scurrilous website that does not require the user to verify the authenticity of the email or uses a text based method to a burner phone to serve as verification. Then over the years post insanely negative comments especially related to race or sex and then simply wait for the best time to unleash the scandal. We have sleeper cells of terrorist organizations here now and the same tactics used by them to sit quietly by until they strike is no different than political operatives planting the seeds for later destruction. This is all it takes to destroy someone.
We are not talking about his computers being forensically tested for evidence of child porn where even deleted files can be recovered. We are talking about Kaczynski getting a tip to look at the porn site under an alias Robinson had used on other sites.
When it comes to CNN, how credible have they been with reporting on scandals? Did CNN simply accept the 51 intelligence officials or did they press the FBI on the veracity of the claim that it was Hunter Biden’s laptop? How often did CNN push the narrative that Trump claimed the Neo Nazis were “good people” in Charlottesville or that he incited violence on January 6, 2021? We know where CNN stands.
I have to weigh the evidence here. There is not even the preponderance of evidence which I would think should require similar statements to be espoused in other places. Using his strong language in which he chastises his political opposition to serve as additional evidence is insufficient.
I read the Assembly article and did not find it instructive other than to learn that some people in Greensboro claim they knew him from a place for peep shows which was near a Papa Johns where Robinson worked in his twenties; one of whom had a less than stellar past with the criminal justice system. While the stories are relatively the same, none of the identified persons were his supporters and the one that claimed he never went to two specific locations was a supporter. The Assembly article uses a recent photo of the main character, alleging Robinson’s frequent visits to the peep show, with him at a Planet Fitness. Such a photo now has limited use as it was taken after Robinson was Lieutenant Governor. I contend the goal of the Planet Fitness photo was to say “see I was with Mark Robinson and therefore what I said was true”. The article also make a point to tie Trump and Robinson to Project 2025.
If you want to believe this salacious story by all means do so. The progressive Left wants you to accept without thinking what could be contrived evidence.
So, I saw or heard about this story somewhere last night I think. I didn’t really pick up all the particulars then. What I recall was that Trump’s campaign was pressuring Robinson to withdraw from the race, and that midnight yesterday was the deadline for candidates to do so, which might mean that there would be no name on the ballot. These things allegedly occurred around 2011 or so, I think, and I also recall that the Carolina Journal was mentioned, which is a news magazine run by the John Locke Foundation here in North Carolina, and I regard as very reputable (and libertarian/conservative leaning).
None of that sounds good for Robinson, and as well, I was hearing that it had been leaked now because of that deadline for withdrawal.
So I did a little digging this afternoon. Apparently the involvement of the Carolina Journal was an interview with CBS news where she said that Robinson strongly denied the allegations and planned to stay in the race. Robinson is saying that Josh Stein, his opponent, leaked this story to CNN. I believe it is not the first allegation made against Robinson this year — but being conservative and black earns special ire from the Democrats.
Here is some background on the North Carolina governor’s races of recent years.
In 2008 Bev Perdue narrowly defeated Republican Pat McCrory in the Obama wave. Unfortunately for her, she got the blame for the Great Recession (her approval ratings were in the teens at one point) and decided not to run for re-election, breaking a long stretch of two term governors. McCrory, who had served as mayor of Charlotte and who is much more of a centrist than many Republicans (Charlotte is a typical deep blue big town), won handily in 2012.
McCrory had some clashes with the state Republican party during his term and narrowly lost (just over 10,000 votes) to our current governor Roy Cooper. From what I heard, McCrory offended a group of Republicans in the Charlotte area by his handling of some highway project and that likely cost him the election.
Cooper I think got credit for his initial handling of the Covid pandemic, and won re-election by 4.5%, which apparently was the closest governor’s race in 2020. This in the same election where Republicans retained very firm control of the legislature, took all the statewide judicial races and many of the Council of State races. And, by the by, this was the election Robinson was elected Lieutenant Governor.
Just glanced over his Wikipedia page — it is unremittingly hostile. I do wonder how much of it was written in the last 24 hours or so. Robinson is a newcomer to politics, only getting involved since about 2018 or 2019.
As Jack mentioned, Robinson was already trailing in the polls. True or false, I imagine this story will hurt him — stories like this always get trumpeted, denials are not featured, and if it proves to be false — well, will that even get reported?
We’ll see. It is very frustrating for North Carolinians — statewide it tilts mostly Republican except for the governor.
More about this.
https://x.com/BehizyTweets/status/1838285499401711816?t=kekjhxKST78qAaDAsd7EXQ&s=19
That’s an embarrassingly illogical tweet, and it ignores the fact that Robinson is already on the record as saying equally outrageous things. At worst, if CNN’s info is accurate, you can fault them for not vetting him earlier.
Just to keep everyone up-to-date on this topic…
NC gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson hires Trump-friendly lawyer to investigate porn website allegations
You all can decide on your own if this is this Robinson’s way of trying to whitewash over his past remarks or is it his way of finding out who is fabricating defamation level lies about him?
I refuse to condemn Robinson as guilty for an 11th hour (aka October surprise) smear that’s so astounding that people would be shocked if it wasn’t accurate. At this point in time the accusation has still not been supported with direct facts it’s all correlation and therefore circumstantial, I’m thinking that if they actually had direct facts they would have already presented them. Robinson may be a real piece of shit but I’m still not going to weigh in on his guilt or innocence for these porn site comments until I see some verifiable fact based evidence one way or the other.
“The political left has shown its pattern of propaganda lies within their narratives so many times since 2016 that it’s beyond me why anyone would blindly accept any narrative that the political left and their lapdog media actively push?” Steve Witherspoon
The political left’s pattern is very clear to me and they’ve made their bed, either they take the effort to actually prove things right up front with real direct factual evidence or I don’t believe them, period.