Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that North Carolina gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson should sue CNN if its report on allegations about explicit remarks he supposedly made online is false.
“The charges are beyond unnerving. If they’re true, he’s unfit to serve for office. If they’re not true, he has the best lawsuit in the history of the country for libel,” Mr. Graham, South Carolina Republican, said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “He’s claiming they were artificially created and that CNN passed it along to be true.”
Mr. Graham said Mr. Robinson, North Carolina’s Republican lieutenant governor, “deserves a chance to defend himself” after CNN reported about an alleged online post in which he called himself a “Black Nazi,” advocated for a return of slavery and disparaged Muslims and Jews.
The senator’s remarks came one day after Sen. Thom Tillis, North Carolina Republican, posted on X that Mr. Robinson should file a lawsuit against the news outlet if its charges are not true or else leave the race.
“If the reporting on Mark Robinson is a total media fabrication, he needs to take immediate legal action,” Mr. Tillis posted. “If the reporting is true, he owes it to [former] President [Donald] Trump and every Republican to take accountability for his actions and put the future of NC & our party before himself.”
Mr. Robinson vowed Thursday to stay in the governor’s race against state Attorney General Josh Stein after CNN reported that Mr. Robinson had posted slurs and referred to himself as a “Black Nazi” on a pornographic website’s forum between 2008 and 2012.
The lieutenant governor posted an 82-second video on X calling the allegations “salacious tabloid lies.”
“We are staying in this race and we are in it to win it,” he said.
Mr. Robinson, who has been endorsed by Mr. Trump, did not appear Saturday at a Trump campaign rally in Wilmington, and the Republican presidential nominee did not mention Mr. Robinson in his speech.
The Democratic campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris wasted no time in broadcasting an attack ad in the state linking Mr. Trump to Mr. Robinson, whom the former president said in March was “better than Martin Luther King.”
Mr. Robinson released on Thursday a pre-buttal after local news outlets and social media were buzzing about a looming CNN report that could affect the race.
CNN reported that Mr. Robinson posted on a website, Nude Africa, more than a decade ago under a moniker he commonly used online, though his online profile had his full name and email address.
Writing on a forum about Black Republicans, the report says he called himself a “Black Nazi” and wrote: “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few.”
“The things that you will see in that story, those are not the words of Mark Robinson,” the candidate said Thursday in his X video. “You know my words, you know my character.”
Mr. Robinson said opponents are “desperate” to change the topic from issues important to voters.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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