Former President Donald Trump has reportedly claimed that he is "not familiar" with Republican North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson's imperiled gubernatorial campaign, despite having endorsed and praised Robinson.
The Tar Heel State Republican official has plummeted in the polls since a CNN report last month uncovered a series of inflammatory posts he purportedly made to a porn website. The posts included Robinson allegedly calling himself a "Black Nazi," praising Adolf Hitler's Nazi manifesto Mein Kampf and fondly recalling "peeping" on women in bathrooms.
Trump previously offered an enthusiastic endorsement of Robinson for governor, referred to him as "Martin Luther King on steroids" and frequently hosted him at North Carolina rallies. However, Robinson, a conspicuous absence at the Trump rallies since September, has barely been mentioned publicly by Trump since the scandal broke.
The former president claimed that he did not "know the situation" after being asked by a reporter at New York City's Trump Tower late last month. His claimed ignorance of the scandal continued on Monday after Politico's Natalie Allison asked whether he still supported Robinson at the end of a news conference in North Carolina.
"I'm not familiar with the state of the race right now ... I haven't seen it," Trump reportedly said before quickly entering a vehicle waiting to take him back to his private jet.
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Trump and Robinson campaigns via email on Monday night.
Robinson denies making any of the controversial posts and has refused repeated calls to drop out of the gubernatorial race. CNN's report included extensive evidence that appeared to link the then-future lieutenant governor to posts made under the username "minisoldr" more than a decade ago on a porn website called "Nude Africa."
In addition to his alleged self-identification as a Nazi, Robinson's purported Nude Africa posts also mentioned that he enjoyed viewing transgender porn. Robinson has since suggested that transgender children are "demonic" and earlier this year proposed banning transgender people from using bathrooms and instead forcing them to go "outside."
Robinson dismissed CNN's report as "tabloid trash" and sued the network for defamation last week. The lawsuit claims that CNN published the allegations "despite knowing or recklessly disregarding" that information linking Robinson to the posts was "previously compromised by multiple data breaches."
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, Robinson's Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race, has expanded his lead over the Republican since the news of the "minisoldr" Nude Africa posts emerged, with many recent polls showing Stein holding a double-digit advantage.
The three most recent surveys of the North Carolina race show Robinson trailing by 8 points in a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll, 15 points in an AtlasIntel poll and a massive 22 points in a poll from Morning Consult.
While Democrats have been highlighting Trump's praise of Robinson amid the scandal, political experts have expressed doubts that the association will significantly damage Trump's chances of defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in North Carolina next month, even if it dooms Robinson's hopes of winning the governor's mansion.
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