Former President Donald J. Trump’s scheduling conflicts led him to headline a rally in North Carolina on Saturday, just two days after Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, whom he endorsed for the state’s next governor, was accused of making a series of disturbing posts on a pornography site.
Ahead of the rally, there was much interest in political circles as to how Trump, who called Robinson a “Martin Luther King on steroids,” would respond to a shocking CNN report that Robinson had once called himself a “black Nazi” and defended slavery in a pornography forum several years ago.
The answer? He wouldn’t.
At a raucous rally on an airport tarmac in Wilmington, North Carolina, Trump spoke for more than an hour, praising several North Carolina officials and politicians but making no mention of Robinson or the scandal surrounding him. Robinson, who denies the allegations, was conspicuously absent.
Instead, Trump delivered a fairly standard rally speech, attacking Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats on the economy and immigration, while also straying from topic to topic, including criticizing Harris’ livestreamed event with Oprah Winfrey this week, calling Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a “wacko,” saying he would ask Elon Musk to help send a rocket to Mars and falsely claiming that an Olympic boxer is transgender.
One of the few speakers at Saturday’s rally to acknowledge the controversy embroiled Robinson was Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican candidate for state attorney general, who called the revelations a “meticulously timed and orchestrated character attack.”
Building on his efforts to make immigration a central issue in his presidential campaign, where voters have expressed dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, Trump said he would work to get Congress to pass legislation that would outlaw so-called sanctuary cities, which limit cooperation between federal immigration authorities and local police. During his presidency, Trump issued an executive order that sought to withhold federal funding from such cities, but was blocked by a federal court.
Trump has vowed to launch a massive deportation operation if elected, saying he would mobilize federal law enforcement to “hunt” and “get” those in the country illegally.
But Trump made no mention of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, who he falsely claimed were eating people’s pets during a presidential debate this month. On Wednesday night, Trump said he planned to visit Springfield “in the next two weeks.” In an op-ed for The New York Times on Friday, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a supporter of Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, wrote that he was “saddened that they and others continue to denigrate legal immigrants living in Springfield and repeat claims that lack evidence.”
Trump, who has polls showing him trailing Harris among female voters, appealed directly to women, repeating the claims he made in a lengthy, all-caps social media post throughout the night, claiming that “women are more stressed, depressed and unhappy than they were four years ago.”
Trump has boasted that he appointed three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, a decision that stripped away the constitutional right to abortion and led to abortion bans or restrictions in 22 states. Many voters in battleground states, especially women, say abortion will be central to their November vote. But speaking of women at the rally, Trump said, “Abortion no longer has to be a consideration, because abortion is now decided by a vote of the states and the people, as it always should have been.”
Trump also repeated the false claim that his political opponent supports “executing babies after birth,” which is illegal in all 50 states.
Dante Murphy, a Baptist pastor in Wilmington who stood prominently behind reporters at the rally wearing a “Mark Robinson for Governor” T-shirt and an autographed baseball cap, said he continues to support Robinson but that it makes perfect sense for Trump to avoid the topic.
“You know, he’s just playing it safe for now by keeping quiet,” he said.
