Mark Robinson's big mistake with MAGA: Being afraid to own his pro-Hitler posts

Donald Trump has turned on Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina. Axios reports that while Trump once lavished praise on the gubernatorial candidate, calling him "one of the great leaders in our country," he now wants voters to forget he had anything to do with Robinson. The assumption across the political media is that Robinson — who has a long history of overt misogyny, loudmouthed racism, and even Holocaust denial — has become too toxic for Trump. "Trump is being weighed down by a very unpopular Republican candidate for governor," Mick Mulvaney, Trump's former chief of staff, told NewsNation a month ago.

Republicans made a last-ditch attempt to push Robinson out of the race on Thursday after CNN published a report linking Robinson to the username "minisoldr," a Nazi-praising self-proclaimed "perv" who was a frequent poster at the adult forum Nude Africa. Certainly, by the standards of pre-MAGA politics, it's hard to imagine someone who wrote this stuff surviving an hour politically after exposure. Robinson called himself a "black NAZI," longed for a return to slavery, and lauded Adolph Hitler as a superior leader to then-President Barack Obama. All terrible stuff, of course. But it's a little unclear why Republicans think it should be a career-ender for a MAGA politician. It all just sounds like a typical dinner conversation at Mar-a-Lago.

Perhaps Robinson's big mistake is refusing to own his rancid commentary. Instead, he's offering a denial approximately no one believes, telling CNN, "This is not us. These are not our words. And this is not anything that is characteristic of me." When reminded of the overwhelming evidence that this is, indeed him (or "we," as he apparently calls himself), Robinson went full Trump by making up a conspiracy theory on the spot: "I’m not going to get into the minutia of how somebody manufactured this, these salacious tabloid lies."

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There's an alternate model offered by Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio: Instead of running away from your incendiary past comments, insist that all criticism is illegitimate nonsense from a "woke mob." When Trump defamed Haitian immigrants during the presidential debate earlier this month, claiming they're "eating the pets," his campaign didn't back down, even as the lie led to so many bomb threats it shut a huge percentage of the town down. Instead, Vance admitted that he "created" the lie on CNN, arguing that lying is a legitimate political tactic to manipulate media coverage. The campaign also tried to justify the lie, which was originally circulated by known neo-Nazis, by producing a police report of a missing cat, who turned out not to be missing at all.

That's the usual MAGA two-step: Do or say something horrible, and when called out on it, declare yourself the victim of "cancel culture." That's usually enough to get the red-hatted masses to rally to your side. It's not like Robinson's comments on the forum differ in substance from what's coming from the top of the ticket, even if he sometimes used more blunt language. Nor is it all that different from what Robinson has said publicly under his real name.

As CNN documented, Robinson was fond of using bigoted slurs against roughly every group imaginable, such as the f-word for gay men, anti-semitic terms, and calling Muslims "rag-headed." These words are often unprintable, but flinging slurs is not substantively different than what Vance and Trump are doing with false accusations that Haitian immigrants are "eating the cats." As Rachel Maddow recently explained on Stephen Colbert's show, "The Trump-Vance campaign is taking their cues from a literal Nazi group that started this thing in Springfield."

On the forums, Robinson bragged repeatedly about peeping in on women's locker rooms, which is confessing to a sex crime. Trump, famously, did the same on the "Access Hollywood" tape, where he bragged about sexually assaulting women, adding, "when you're a star, they let you do it." A jury later found that Trump had sexually assaulted journalist E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan department store, an act the judge described as how "many people commonly understand the word 'rape.'" This is likely one reason Trump liked Robinson, who regularly defended rapists and wife-beaters. Robinson, under his real name, also argued women should not have the right to vote and that forced childbirth is a suitable punishment for a woman who has consensual sex.

In his posts to Nude Africa, Robinson occasionally praised Hitler and called himself a "black NAZI!" No surprise, really, as under his real name, Robinson denied the Holocaust, calling it "hogwash," and pushed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. He also has used genocidal language generally, declaring "some folks need killing!" while discussing people on the left. Trump hasn't publicly engaged in Holocaust denial, but he did make sure to be seen dining with prominent Holocaust denialist Nick Fuentes, along with the notoriously anti-semitic rapper Kanye West. Tucker Carlson, who gave a fascistic speech at the Republican National Convention, also recently championed a Holocaust denier, without losing an ounce of support from Trump. Trump also enjoys genocidal rhetoric, bragging that his proposed mass deportation of millions will be "bloody."

In everything Robinson said under his pseudonym, there's a parallel in mainstream MAGA culture. Robinson defended slavery and wished to own slaves himself. At a Thursday congressional hearing, Mark Krikorian, a close Trump ally and contributor to Project 2025, admitted to a history of arguing that Haiti would be better off if the residents hadn't revolted and ended slavery. Trump tends to be more oblique on this front, but he frequently works himself into a lather over defending slave-owners against those who keep saying slavery was a bad thing.

On the forum, Robinson expressed a loathing of Martin Luther King Jr. that bordered on an obsession, calling him a "commie b*stard" and longing to be in the KKK so he could attack King more robustly. This helps clarify a weird, trolling joke Trump made while endorsing Robinson, calling him "Martin Luther King on steroids." It's an odd thing to say publicly, but it makes a bit more sense if it's an in-joke winking at a man who hates MLK. Trump's campaign has hired Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk to run their "get out the vote" operation. Kirk openly denounces King, calling the assassinated civil rights leader "awful" and "not a good person."

Trump and his acolytes have weaponized shamelessness, embracing the view that bigotry is only a scandal if you act embarrassed over having such ignorant and hateful views. As a general election strategy, it's not as effective as they pretend, as MAGA candidates tend to underperform, compared to more staid Republican candidates. But as a way to capture the GOP base, this strategy is killer. It turns out that there's nothing partisan Republican voters want more than permission to be loud, unapologetic jerks. It's why Robinson won his primary and why Trump will be the GOP favorite until he dies or goes to prison.

So while it's not surprising Robinson is digging in and refusing to drop out, it's a little more surprising that he's chickened out, unwilling to own his past posts. It's not like his denials will convince any fence-sitters to vote for him, as no one could believe his nonsense excuses. But by running away from his past rhetoric, he's bucking the expectations for GOP leadership under Trump: never back down and never apologize. If he loses in North Carolina, Robinson probably doesn't have a future in MAGA politics.