CNN —
An offensive post by North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson was removed from the pornography website Nude Africa on Thursday, hours after a CNN KFile investigation uncovered a series of inflammatory comments posted by the controversial, socially conservative Republican candidate for North Carolina governor on the forum.
It’s unclear whether Robinson or Nude Africa administrators removed the comments. Neither Robinson’s campaign nor Nude Africa responded to CNN’s inquiries.
Robinson denies the comments, which were made between 2008 and 2012, before he entered politics and his current tenure as lieutenant governor, and which run counter to his public positions on issues such as abortion and transgender rights.
Robinson’s profile on Nude Africa, a pornography site with a message board, included his full name, as well as an email address he had used on numerous websites across the Internet over the decades.
The comments, many of which were sexually explicit, were posted under a username Robinson frequently uses online: “minisoldr.” CNN matched the two men’s biographical details and a shared email address, which it identified as Robinson.
In his posts, Robinson has commented on issues of race, sex, and abortion — in one post, he called himself a “black Nazi!” and voiced his support for reinstating slavery — and, despite the recent proliferation of anti-trans rhetoric, he discussed his affinity for transgender pornography.
The revelations have led to growing pressure on Robinson, who is in a tight race with Democrat Josh Stein to succeed term-limited Gov. Roy Cooper, to withdraw from the race. But a deadline set by state law for Robinson to remove his name from the ballot passed Thursday, but he did not, and the state’s first absentee ballots were scheduled to be mailed out on Friday.
The battleground state has been a target of former President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Harris campaign was quick to link Trump to Robinson by sharing photos of the two together on social media, but the Trump campaign declined to comment Thursday on whether Robinson should withdraw from the gubernatorial race.
“President Trump’s campaign is focused on winning the White House and saving our country, and North Carolina is a critical part of that plan,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in a statement to CNN, without directly addressing the reports.
“When voters compare the Trump Administration’s record of success — a strong economy, low inflation, secure borders and safe streets — with the failures of a Biden-Harris Administration, we are confident President Trump will win the Tar Heel State again. We will not take our eyes off this goal,” Leavitt continued.
The former president voiced his support for Robinson at an event in North Carolina earlier this year, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
