Donald Trump returned Saturday for a campaign rally in North Carolina, where the former president is confronting a mess he played a key role in making in the critical battleground state.
The Republican nominee for governor, Mark Robinson – whom Trump has repeatedly compared to Martin Luther King Jr. – declined to drop out of the race by Thursday’s deadline, ignoring calls to do so from the NAACP, North Carolina newspaper editorial boards and some congressional Republicans.
That pressure followed a CNN report detailing his history of inflammatory comments on a porn website’s message board. Robinson, the current North Carolina lieutenant governor, referred to himself as a “black NAZI,” expressed support for reinstating slavery, made repeated graphic sexual comments and more.
The Trump campaign did not invite Robinson to the former president’s rally Saturday in Wilmington, and Trump made no mention of the lieutenant governor in his remarks.
On Friday, Trump’s Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, launched a new television advertisement tying Trump to Robinson – the first time the Harris campaign has used an ad to connect the former president with a down-ballot candidate.
The ad doesn’t mention Robinson’s offensive porn message board comments, but it intersperses Trump’s past praise for Robinson with some of the GOP gubernatorial nominee’s anti-abortion comments, including Robinson voicing support for a statewide abortion ban that would not include exceptions.
It opens with clips of Trump calling Robinson “an unbelievable lieutenant governor” and referring to him as “better than Martin Luther King,” along with video of Robinson saying, “For me, there is no compromise on abortion” and “We could pass a bill and say, ‘You can’t have an abortion in North Carolina for any reason.’”