Mark Robinson, North Carolina Republican gov. candidate, decries CNN story about messages he allegedly left on porn site as 'tabloid trash'

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor in that state, denied the accusations put forth in a CNN story published Thursday that he left numerous graphic comments on a porn site’s message board.

“Let me reassure you,” Robinson said in a video posted to social media ahead of the publication of CNN’s piece, “the things that you will see in that story, those are not the words of Mark Robinson.”

The words in question were posted to the message board of the porn website Nude Africa between 2008 and 2012, prior to Robinson’s foray into elected office, under the user name “minisoldr,” which Robinson has allegedly used on a variety of other websites over the years, CNN reported.

Using that screen name, according to CNN, Robinson described himself as a “black NAZI!”

Robinson has been outspoken about his opposition to rights for transgender people. But of the many comments discovered by CNN was one left by minisoldr that spoke of being aroused by watching transgender porn.

“I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f***ing hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson wrote, according to CNN. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”

In his statement on Thursday, Robinson brushed aside the story as politically motivated and compared the allegations to those made about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

“Folks, this race right now, our opponents are desperate to shift the focus here from the substantive issues and focus on what you are concerned with to salacious tabloid trash,” Robinson said, adding, “And folks, we’ve seen this type of stuff in the past as well. Clarence Thomas famously once said he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. Well, it looks like Mark Robinson is too.”

But Robinson may not evade the allegations against him the way Thomas did during his confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1991.

In a story published by the Assembly earlier this month, former employees and customers of porn shops in Greensboro, N.C., came forward to share how Robinson had been a frequent visitor at those establishments. Robinson campaign spokesperson Mike Lonergan called their accounts “bulls***.”

Robinson, who trails his Democratic opponent Josh Stein in polls, has already been under the microscope for his inflammatory rhetoric. In 2021, Robinson gave a speech in which he criticized affirmative action programs, saying that Black people were actually the ones who owed a debt.

“If you want to tell the truth about it, it is YOU who owes!” he told his audience.

He has cast doubt on the Holocaust that killed more than 6 million Jews in Europe, calling reports of it “hogwash,” and he has decried the LGBTQ+ community as “filth.”

In 2020, he proclaimed himself in favor of a total ban on abortion, without exceptions for the life of the mother, but in 2022 he expressed regret about paying his own wife to undergo an abortion in the 1980s.

An email address belonging to Robinson was also registered to Ashley Madison, a website catering to adults looking for extramarital affairs, Politico reported Thursday. One of Robinson’s advisers, who was given anonymity by the publication, confirmed that the email address belonged to the lieutenant governor.

While former President Donald Trump has supported Robinson’s candidacy for governor, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids” at a rally on March 2, other Republicans have worried that he is almost certain to lose in November and his presence on the ballot could tip the state in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Thursday is also the deadline for a candidate to withdraw from the election.