Why a scandal consuming a Trump protégé could harm the ex-president in North Carolina

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

(CNN) — Donald Trump risks being doomed by what he wrought in North Carolina.

An already fiercely fought presidential contest in the critical swing state was thrown into greater turmoil Thursday by a stunning CNN investigation revealing a porn-site scandal surrounding Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson.

Lt. Gov. Robinson, whose politics and personality are extreme even by the standards of Trump’s MAGA movement, referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago and expressed support for reinstating slavery, CNN’s KFile reported. Many of the remarks were lewd and gratuitously sexual in nature.

Robinson denied he made the comments, which predated his political career. But his proximity to Trump, who dubbed him “Martin Luther King on steroids” and had him on stage at a recent rally, jolted the White House race.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign swiftly highlighted the scandal’s national implications and tried to equate Trump with Robinson as it argues that the ex-president is anti-woman, immoral, extreme and unfit to serve. The campaign for instance posted photos of the two men together on social media with an emoji of Trump’s signature thumbs-up.

The question of whether Robinson’s political disaster will seriously hurt Trump’s chances in one of the most tightly fought and important battleground states is a complex one. Trump voters are hugely loyal to their candidate — so it doesn’t necessarily follow that if they disdain Robinson, they won’t vote for the ex-president. And Democrats have several times thought North Carolina was ripe to pick off in recent elections — only for it to stubbornly stay red. Still, any fall-off of Republican turnout could be significant in a race that is currently neck-and-neck. And the implications are massive, since North Carolina could open up a fallback route to the White House for Harris in the event that she loses one of the Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan.

And it would be an ironic historical coda if Trump becomes collateral damage to a Republican who would have been anathema to the old GOP but who thrived in the smash mouth political era the ex-president nurtured.

A window into the Trump GOP and a tightly fought election

The fresh North Carolina rumpus is a multi-layered lesson in the identity of the Republican Party in the Trump era, the extraordinary tight nature of the race to 270 Electoral Votes, and is a window into America’s future depending on who wins in November.

— Robinson is the latest in a string of outlandish and often vulnerable candidates who rose because they flattered Trump. Some paid homage to Trump by copying his unconventional behavior or by buying into his false claims of electoral fraud. Many top Republicans blame these champions of the base for handing power to Democrats in House, Senate and gubernatorial races in recent years.

— Robinson was already trailing Democratic candidate and North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein by a significant margin in the gubernatorial contest. But his new problems quickly pushed North Carolina even further to the forefront of the presidential race. Harris senior adviser David Plouffe made the point simply on X: “16 key electoral votes.”

— Democrats had already been pushing hard to win North Carolina for the first time since Plouffe’s previous boss, Barack Obama, won it in 2008. With a Democrat already in the governor’s mansion and with their candidate to replace him well placed, the party may never have a better chance to prevail.

— Trump’s previous support for Robinson goes deeper than simple admiration for a like-minded political wrecking ball whose uncouth style and rhetoric about women, gay and transgender Americans was well known to voters who selected him to be their lieutenant governor. The former president has had some success in making inroads among Black male voters as he seeks to undermine the Democratic coalition and his past support for Robinson will be seen through that prism.

A new twist in a turbulent race

The furor over Robinson was just the latest head-spinning moment in one of the most unpredictable presidential campaigns in decades, that has seen a sitting president, Joe Biden, fold his reelection bid after a devastating debate performance mere months before the election and two apparent assassination attempts on his rival, Trump.

In the last week alone, Trump’s campaign has lurched from one controversy to another. He and his vice presidential nominee have doubled down on the conspiracy theory that targeted Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been eating residents’ pets. A reference to Harris’ lack of biological children by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders at a Trump event again highlighted the campaign’s apparent indifference to its poor standing among crucial women voters. And Trump spent precious time Wednesday night in New York, apparently alone in his belief that the state is in play in November.

As mayhem envelops Trump, Harris has been doing the grunt work of a traditional campaign as she tries to inch toward the White House. This week she’s reached out to vital elements of her coalition, including Hispanics, Black voters, women voters and Asian Pacific Americans. On Thursday night, she was taking part in a “Unite For America” event with Oprah Winfrey that was an attempt to lock in a huge turnout among White women and Black women voters that could counteract the ex-president’s huge edge among White male voters.

How Trump can mitigate the damage

The KFile investigation about Robinson landed the Trump campaign with a suddenly breaking crisis. The lieutenant governor recently spoke at the ex-president’s economic speech in Asheville, North Carolina, and he was called on stage by the Republican nominee in a rally at Asheboro last month. That’s makes it hard for the Trump team to insulate the former president.

Their initial response to the KFile story however showed a clear desire to distance the Republican nominee from the new scandal. “President Trump’s campaign is focused on winning the White House and saving this country. North Carolina is a vital part of that plan,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said. “We are confident that as voters compare the Trump record of a strong economy, low inflation, a secure border, and safe streets, with the failures of Biden-Harris, then President Trump will win the Tarheel State once again. We will not take our eye off the ball.”

Leavitt implied that the fundamentals of the presidential race have not changed even as Democrats link Robinson and Trump, and that the ex-president’s support base is so solid that he’s impervious to the knock-on impact of trouble for a lesser light of the MAGA movement.

Margaret Hoover, a conservative commentator and CNN political analyst, said that there could be some implications for the Republican vote in November but that the character of the Trump coalition meant that it did not necessarily follow that the ex-president would suffer in the Robinson fallout.

“I don’t think we should necessarily think that Donald Trump is toast here because the terrible Republican candidate for governor is on his way to being toasted,” Hoover told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “MAGA supporters are MAGA supporters regardless of who the Republican nominee is for governor.”

There was no call Thursday from Trump for Robinson to exit the race. That would be out of character for an ex-president who has defied controversies almost every week for the last nine years that would have felled a conventional politician.

But the KFile story came just hours before the deadline under state law for a candidate to pull their name from the ballot at 11:59 p.m. Thursday, with the first absentee ballots set to be mailed Friday. But there was no behind-the-scenes effort from the Trump campaign to force Robinson out, CNN’s Alayna Treene and Kristen Holmes reported, despite long-standing concerns by those around the ex-president about the lieutenant governor’s past inflammatory comments including over a school shooting and disparaging the civil rights movement.

An opening for Harris

The Harris campaign will do everything it can to ensure the Robinson furor doesn’t abate.

North Carolina’s sitting Gov. Roy Cooper, a two-term Democrat, broadened the scandal beyond Robinson and sought to link it to Trump. “Donald Trump and NC GOP leaders embraced Mark Robinson for years knowing who he was and what he stood for including disrespect for women and inciting violence. They reap what they sow,” Cooper said in a social media post.

But until votes are counted on election night, it will be hard to definitively pin down Robinson’s impact on the presidential ballot and on GOP enthusiasm.

The prospects however are tantalizing for Democrats simply because of how close the state has been. In 2012, Obama lost it to Republican nominee Mitt Romney by about 2 percentage points. Trump beat Hillary Clinton there by nearly four points in 2016. But Biden only lost it by just over one point in 2020.

Election forecaster Nate Silver told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday that with such margins, and with polls showing a tight race this time, late breaking developments in North Carolina could be multiplied. “In a state like North Carolina in particular it’s mostly a turnout state … if you have something like Mark Robinson who moves the polls by half a point all of a sudden that state becomes more interesting,” Silver said.

“Usually, you do not have reverse coattails, meaning the presidential race can affect down ballot races but not the other way around,” Silver went on, but he suggested aggressive Democratic advertising linking Robinson to Trump and potentially depressed Republican turnout could have an impact on who wins.

Those 16 electoral votes would open hugely significant possibilities for Harris, but Democrats have seen their hopes dashed in North Carolina before.

Trump’s arrival in 2016 held Democratic advances in the state at bay after many analysts had expected it to follow the trajectory of neighboring Virginia, which was transformed into a reliable Democratic state in presidential elections because of its booming suburbs and influx of more liberal highly educated voters attracted by booming hi-tech and medical tech industries.

If North Carolina finally goes blue again this year, it may show that Republicans are finally tiring of the pandemonium and MAGA fellow travelers Trump has enabled. But if the ex-president wins the state for the third time on the bounce, he’ll once again show his staggering resilience — no matter the chaos swirling around him.

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