North Carolina GOP nominee for governor Mark Robinson responds to report about disturbing posts

Info Fun and Islam

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00:00My colleague M and I found a series of highly disturbing posts more than a decade ago on the

00:06message board of a pornographic website, and we traced them directly to Mark Robinson. Now,

00:12we did interview Robinson yesterday, and he categorically denies making these posts. I'll

00:17get to that in just one moment. But first, I want to walk people through just some of them.

00:22Take a look at this post right here. In one post, Robinson called himself a quote,

00:27black Nazi. And when discussing then President Barack Obama in 2012, writing, quote, I take

00:34Hitler over any of the shit that's in Washington right now. It even goes beyond that. Another

00:41disturbing post. Robinson defended slavery, writing, quote, Slavery is not that bad,

00:47and I wish they would bring back slavery. I would certainly buy a few. He also disparaged,

00:53as you mentioned, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., using a slur to refer to him

00:59and calling him a quote, commie bastard. All those comments and others you can read on CNN.com were

01:06made on the message board of a porn website called Nude Africa and Wolf. In addition to those posts,

01:12he also expressed views on nude Africa that sharply contradicts his current policies as a

01:17socially conservative candidate for governor. For example, he has been vocally anti-transgender.

01:23But look at what Robinson wrote on the porn message board a decade ago that he liked,

01:28quote, watching transgender porn, adding, quote, that's effing hot and called himself a quote,

01:34perv. In another thread that was discussing the story of a woman who said she had been

01:38raped by her taxi driver while she was drunk, Robinson wrote, quote, and the moral of this

01:43story, don't eff a drunk white bitch. So he wrote all this years ago, as you know, Andrew,

01:51when he was an ordinary citizen, before he even got into politics. How do we know it's him?

01:58Well, Wolf, we found that Robinson consistently used the same username,

02:02mini soldier, that he used on nude Africa in all of his social media. You can see it on

02:07Pinterest, Black Planet, YouTube. He even previously used it as his Twitter handle.

02:12Now, his full name was even also listed on nude Africa. And the email that we found

02:18that he used there, he also used on several other websites. The biographical data from

02:23multiple websites using mini soldier, including nude Africa, matches Robinson's. There's an exact

02:28date of birth. There's his hometown. There's a fact his mother worked at an HBCU, even that

02:33his favorite episode of The Twilight Zone is number 22. So, Andrew, what does Robinson say

02:39about all of this? Robinson is calling the story trash. He says it's not him. Now, we did ask the

02:46campaign for comment. We gave them 48 hours to respond. That deadline was yesterday. And that's

02:51when Lieutenant Governor Robinson agreed to do a brief interview with us. Here is just a little

02:56bit of that. Lieutenant Governor Robinson, thank you so much for being able to talk to us. I think

03:03we'll just jump right into it. Do you deny that this account is you? Well, first off, let me say

03:08thank you so much for allowing me to come here and clearly here. We absolutely do. This is not us.

03:13These are not our words. And this is not anything that is characteristic of me, nor has it ever been.

03:20The people here of North Carolina know I have been completely transparent about my history,

03:27all the warts. We put them all out. We let folks know about it. But the folks here also know my

03:33character. They know who I am. They know my voice, so to speak. This is not my voice. This is not

03:38things that we would ever say or even think. And so, absolutely, we do. How do you explain all of

03:44the matching details on this profile? The profile on Nude Africa lists your full name as Mark

03:49Robinson. The email listed on the account is an email that you have used elsewhere on the

03:56Internet, including with your photo. You have used that name, Mini Soldier, on multiple social media

04:01accounts, including Twitter, Pinterest, Black Planet, and YouTube. How can you deny, with all

04:07of these matching details, that this is you? Look, I'm not going to get into the minutiae of how

04:12somebody manufactured these salacious tabloid lies, but I can tell you this. There's been over

04:18$1 million spent on me through AI by a billionaire son who's bound and determined to destroy me.

04:23The things that people can do with the Internet now is incredible. But what I can tell you is this.

04:28Again, these are not my words. This is simply tabloid trash being used as a distraction from

04:34the substantive issues that the people of this state are facing. We have addressed it. We have

04:39said it's not true, and we wish we could move on and get busy with the business of the people of

04:44the state. Okay, well, these posts, they do take place over a five-year period from 2008 to 2013.

04:51You mentioned AI. Are you saying that somebody was somehow manufacturing biographical details to

04:57exactly match you using your username? Look, I have no idea how this was done. I have absolutely

05:03no idea how it was done, and I have five weeks left in this campaign to focus on the substantive

05:09issues that North Carolinians face. I do not have time for tabloid trash. There have been rumors

05:15that some of your campaign staff have quit. Can you tell us if that's true or not?

05:20Absolutely not, and we are not getting out of this race. There are people who are counting on

05:24us to win this race because, again, we don't want a governor who's going to be a person that can't

05:29be counted on to tell the truth, and I can assure you my opponent has been taken to court for not

05:35telling the truth in campaigns, and he's been completely dishonest in his ads against me.

05:40This camp is so desperate to destroy us. It's just like Clarence Thomas said years ago.

05:45This is a high-tech lynching, and back long years ago, they used to use rope. Now, they're using cable.

05:52And Lieutenant Governor Robinson released a video shortly after our interview,

05:57reiterating that he plans to stay in the race. Wolf?

06:01Andrew, also tell me a little bit more about those comments that Robinson made about Dr.

06:06Martin Luther King, Jr. Yeah, I mentioned those a little bit earlier, Wolf. He used a slur,

06:13as I mentioned, for MLK Martin Luther King, Jr. He called him Martin Lucifer and then used a slur

06:21that I can't say on air. He also called him a, quote, commie bastard, and that was back when

06:27they were putting his memorial in Washington, D.C. on the National Mall.

06:32Andrew, thanks for your excellent reporting. Thank your team as well. I want to bring in right now

06:36the civil rights advocate Martin Luther King, III, the son of the civil rights icon. He's

06:41joining us from Atlanta. Martin, thank you so much for joining us. First of all,

06:44what's your reaction to Mark Robinson's clearly racist comments about your father?

06:49Well, it is certainly very tragic that instead of elevating what civil rights leaders did

06:58and people in North Carolina who were on the front lines of the modern civil rights movement,

07:03particularly in Greensboro, where the sit-in movement occurred. And by the way, on this day,

07:08Wolf, 66 years ago, my father was stabbed in Harlem while signing his book by a black woman,

07:16from a black woman by the name of Izola Curry. My point for making that is after Dad was stabbed,

07:22the next day he was able to share with the media and he talked about the dangerous rhetoric

07:27that is being propagated in the nation. 66 years ago, 66 years, excuse me, later,

07:35that rhetoric is being propagated, or at least it's been alleged that it's being propagated by

07:40a person who's running for the governor of the state of North Carolina. And so,

07:45it's a very, very sad scenario. As I said, I feel that people should be lifting up the

07:50contributions that have been made by North Carolinians to move things forward in our

07:55nation around civil and human rights so that all people are treated with dignity and respect.

08:01Yeah, that's so important. Former President Trump, as you probably know,

08:05has had some high praise for Robinson in the past. Let me play this one clip. Listen to this.

08:14This is Martin Luther King on steroids. I think you're better than Martin Luther King. I think

08:21you are Martin Luther King times two. One of the great stars of the party,

08:26one of the great stars in politics, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson.

08:33So what's your response to that? Well, first of all, again, I don't even know exactly what

08:40that means, but it does not mean anything positive. The fact that these things have

08:45been attributed to what this person stood for, and it certainly has nothing to do with what my

08:51father and his team and others have stood for about decency, about justice, about creating the

08:57kind of nation where all people are treated fairly. And it's unfortunate, again, but maybe

09:07not surprising. We've seen this kind of behavior from the former president many times, and the fact

09:14that people still embrace that. There is a fraction, I think far more people want to see us

09:20as a nation that works together. We can disagree. During my father's era and my mother's leadership,

09:25they taught us, they were not the only ones, but they taught us how to disagree without being

09:29disagreeable. That's the spirit. We must bring civility back to the political landscape. And I

09:35think we have to work on that every day. We are far better as a nation than the behavior that we

09:40see when we make this kind of divisive rhetoric and language, which is causing all kinds of things

09:48in the political space and in our nation just in general. Yeah, it's so important. I wish that

09:54would happen. Writing in a forum discussing black Republicans back in 2010, Martin Robinson stated,

10:00and it was unprovoked, quote, I'm a black Nazi. Reading those comments, what went through your

10:06mind? You know, I don't ever like to say that somebody is crazy or demented, but that was the

10:16first thing. This person is way off their rocker that you would admire someone who is such an evil

10:25force and figure and did so much harm in relationship to killing Jewish people and

10:32other things. So that you empathize with this person, there's got to be something wrong with you.

10:38And it also says that there should be concerns about North Carolinians who have allowed this

10:44person to emerge as one who's providing leadership. He is a lieutenant governor. So at the end of the

10:50day, we still have a lot of work to do to stamp out hatred, hostility, to stamp out this kind of behavior.

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