WILMINGTON, N.C. \u2014 Donald Trump made no mention of embattled North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson at a rally here Saturday, as Republicans privately worried that the pivotal state could be slipping away amid scrutiny of old comments on a porn site made by a user linked to Robinson.<\/p>\n
During the former president\u2019s speech, in which he repeated false claims that all jobs are going to undocumented immigrants and that Democrats \u201ccheated\u201d in the 2020 election, the former president stressed the importance of the Tar Heel State in his path to re-claiming the Oval Office. He touted his daughter-in-law\u2019s ties to the state and said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley would be \u201clooking for a job\u201d if they lost North Carolina.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re counting on this guy,\u201d he said of Whatley, who was the state party chair in 2020. \u201cMichael, you better win or you\u2019re never going to be able to come back here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump added: \u201cI think he\u2019s going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s visit to Wilmington comes as he and Harris are tied in the state, according to The Washington Post\u2019s polling average, where Democrats haven\u2019t won a presidential election since Barack Obama in 2008. A Trump campaign official told reporters at a briefing last month that as long as Trump wins North Carolina, he just needs to win Georgia and Pennsylvania out of the other six swing states to win the White House.<\/p>\n
Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s campaign, meanwhile, is seeking to tie Trump to Robinson, and released an ad featuring clips of Trump praising Robinson as \u201can unbelievable lieutenant governor\u201d and \u201cbetter than Martin Luther King.\u201d The ad also includes a clip of Robinson saying \u201cthere\u2019s no compromise on abortion.\u201d Trump endorsed Robinson earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Some Republicans fear the controversy surrounding Robinson could be a drag on the presidential race, as well as down-ballot races.<\/p>\n
The state \u201cis trending away from [Trump] but there is time to fix it,\u201d a North Carolina Republican said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the race candidly. \u201cA lot depends on how the campaign responds to the new Harris ad. Linking Trump and Robinson is going to hurt with suburban women.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robinson\u2019s gubernatorial campaign was upended Thursday after CNN reported a porn site user linked to Robinson declared himself a \u201cblack Nazi,\u201d among other racist and lewd comments. That same user, under the name \u201cminisoldr,\u201d also praised Adolf Hitler\u2019s \u201cMein Kampf.\u201d Robinson denied writing the posts. But CNN found many links between Robinson and minisoldr, which matches Robinson\u2019s username on public accounts and lists the user\u2019s full name as \u201cmark robinson.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a post on X, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Friday acknowledged the potential political damage of the Robinson allegations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the reporting on Mark Robinson is a total media fabrication, he needs to take immediate legal action,\u201d Tillis said. \u201cIf the reporting is true, he owes it to President Trump and every Republican to take accountability for his actions and put the future of NC & our party before himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
State GOP leaders continue to officially back Robinson, and Robinson and his allies are betting that many Republican voters are willing to brush aside even the most damaging allegations as \u201cfake news.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, some Republicans are worried. Senior state legislative leaders believed the news was likely to cost them their supermajority in the General Assembly and were continuing to pressure Robinson to drop from the race, the North Carolina Republican source said.<\/p>\n
Trump won his narrowest victory in North Carolina in 2020, topping Biden by just 1.3 percentage points after beating Hillary Clinton by 3.6 percentage points four years earlier. Trump didn\u2019t clear 50 percent in either year. Some Republicans in the state want Trump to distance himself from Robinson\u2019s actions and want him to find a resonant issue to counter the appeal of Harris\u2019s defense of abortion rights. Economic issues may also become less potent for Republicans in part because of rapidly declining gas prices.<\/p>\n
Harris\u2019s campaign is far better organized in North Carolina than President Joe Biden\u2019s was four years ago, mostly because the Democrats ran virtually no door-to-door operation during the covid pandemic. This year\u2019s organizing effort could lead to better Democratic turnout.<\/p>\n
While Trump hasn\u2019t addressed the Robinson allegations, his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), bashed the media while speaking at an event in Pennsylvania for focusing on \u201csalacious scandals in other states,\u201d rather than \u201cthe fact that Donald Trump was nearly assassinated.\u201d Vance will be in Charlotte on Monday for campaign events.<\/p>\n
At Trump\u2019s rally Saturday, it was clear that many in the GOP base were ready to discredit and look past almost any allegation, dismissing unflattering stories as a media smear job. Standing in line for the Italian sausage stand, Ken Webb said he would vote for Robinson despite this week\u2019s scandal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho knows what\u2019s true or not?\u201d he said. \u201cThe media twists and they turn things around on everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
A reporter noted that the porn site user linked to Robinson also described an affair with his wife\u2019s sister and praised \u201cMein Kampf\u201d as a \u201cgood read.\u201d Asked if that concerned him, Webb said the most important thing was defeating Democrats. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein\u2019s support for abortion rights was a dealbreaker, Webb said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a Christian, abortion is not an option for me,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
During his speech, Trump briefly touched on abortion, as he spoke about female voters in broad terms, at one point remarking that \u201cwomen have been through a lot.\u201d Under a second Trump administration, \u201cYou will no longer be thinking about abortion because it is now where it always had to be, with the states,\u201d he told the crowd. Trump also made several baseless and hyperbolic claims, saying if Harris wins, \u201cIsrael will be gone and you won\u2019t have autoworkers.\u201d And he used dehumanizing language to talk about migrants, saying this \u201cinvasion is destroying the fabric of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democrats were jubilant Friday at a state lawmaker\u2019s \u201cBourbon and Bowties\u201d fundraiser in Durham, attended by Gov. Roy Cooper (D) and Stein, running to succeed him. Over drinks on the patio, attendees chattered about the news stories surrounding Robinson and all but declared victory in the governor\u2019s race.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have not followed the news at all,\u201d Stein said a couple minutes into his speech. \u201cDid anything happen, in the last few days, that I need to know about?\u201d<\/p>\n
People cackled. \u201cYou won!\u201d a man yelled. \u201cYou won!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLord help us all,\u201d Stein said, the audience still laughing.<\/p>\n
But later he got serious.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vision of our opponent in this race, the lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, is one of division, violence and hate,\u201d Stein said. He ticked through Robinson\u2019s \u201cculture war\u201d fights, his anti-gay comments and his declaration at a church that \u201cwe are called to be led by men\u201d rather than women.<\/p>\n
The crowd was no longer laughing.<\/p>\n
Meryl Kornfield contributed to this report<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
WILMINGTON, N.C. \u2014 Donald Trump made no mention of embattled North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson at a rally here Saturday, as Republicans privately worried that the pivotal state could be slipping away amid scrutiny of old comments on a porn site made by a user linked to Robinson. During the former president\u2019s speech, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}