Donald J. Trump’s advisers knew they had a problem in North Carolina. What they were frantically trying to learn was how big it would be.
Word had reached the former president’s high command on Thursday that a “bad” story was coming about Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican running for governor in the must-win state of North Carolina.
Mr. Trump’s inner circle was not in possession of the full details before the story was published on CNN’s website, but they knew the bar for what would qualify as a “bad” story for Mr. Robinson was high. The candidate had already quoted a statement attributed to Adolf Hitler and mocked the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting, and Mr. Trump’s advisers had recently started seeking distance from Mr. Robinson.
The Trump team had heard the CNN story had something to do with pornographic websites and the phrase “Black Nazi,” according to two people with direct knowledge of the internal discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
It didn’t help that at the same time they were waiting on the self-identifying Nazi story to come out, Mr. Trump was attending events in Washington, D.C., designed to promote his support for the state of Israel and the Jewish people. It also didn’t help that just months ago the former president had praised Mr. Robinson, who is Black, as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
After CNN published its report, Mr. Trump’s first reaction was that he wanted nothing to do with the scandal and didn’t see why he should get involved, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. His impulse was to ignore the controversy and power through. People close to the former president are holding out hope that Mr. Robinson will still decide to quit the race, despite his early defiant statement of his intention to continue his run for governor.
But with Mr. Trump preparing to visit North Carolina for a rally on Saturday, he’s expected to talk about the controversy in passing, either on his Truth Social platform or once he’s in the state. People close to him anticipate that he will deliver a version of a comment he has made about countless supporters or former aides: that he hardly knows the guy.
The CNN article that was finally published Thursday — which said Mr. Robinson had defended slavery, posted about enjoying watching transgender pornography, recounted how he had gone “peeping” on women in public gym showers as a teenager and called himself a “black NAZI” on a pornographic site’s message board — has scrambled Republican plans for winning North Carolina.
How state Republican leaders and Trump campaign officials expect to repair the damage remained unclear on Friday. One statewide North Carolina Republican sought to separate Mr. Trump from Mr. Robinson hours after the story had broken.
“It was a tough day, but we must stay focused on the races we can win,” Senator Thom Tillis wrote on X, adding, with a reference to the North Carolina General Assembly: “We have to make sure President Trump wins NC and support the outstanding GOP candidates running for key NCGA and judicial races. If Harris takes NC, she takes the White House. We can’t let that happen.”
Earlier on Thursday before the CNN story had broken, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Whatley, a fellow North Carolinian, sounded out Mr. Robinson about rumors of the impending story. Mr. Robinson insisted that anything that was coming was false — a denial he would repeat publicly later in the day.
As they waited for the story to drop, Mr. Trump’s allies and advisers discussed privately whether it would be possible to pressure Mr. Robinson to quit the race. They quickly concluded that direct pressure probably would not work and could in fact backfire, leading him to dig in and defend himself. Mr. Robinson did so anyway. Plus, the state election board might not allow him to be removed from the ballot whether he stayed in the race or not.
In a phone interview shortly before the story ran, a person close to the Trump campaign described the situation in North Carolina, with dry understatement, as “less than ideal.” Establishment Republicans in North Carolina widely viewed Mr. Robinson as an outright electoral danger — to them and to Mr. Trump. His views were extreme even for the Trumpified G.O.P. His hard-line position on abortion gave the Democrats plenty to work with in a state that Mr. Trump won in 2020 and that would be an essential step in his path to winning in 2024.
In public and private polls in North Carolina, Vice President Kamala Harris had already pulled nearly even with Mr. Trump. Mr. Robinson lagged far behind his Democratic rival, the state’s attorney general, Josh Stein, and the constant swirl of controversies around him already dominated the news coverage of the state.
The Harris campaign quickly spliced together some of the praise Mr. Trump had heaped on Mr. Robinson. “You have to cherish him,” Mr. Trump once said. “He’s like a fine wine.”
Asked about the CNN story on Thursday, a Trump spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, released a statement that made no mention of any part of it. It did not include the words “Mark Robinson.”
Instead, Ms. Leavitt said Mr. Trump would win the White House and called North Carolina a “vital part of that plan.”
“We will not take our eye off the ball,” she said.
Even if it was too late to get Mr. Robinson’s name off the ballots, the bulk of Mr. Trump’s advisers would be happy for him to drop out of the race and concede the governor’s mansion seven weeks before Election Day. In the meantime, they planned to monitor their internal polls to see if the controversy was having any effect on Mr. Trump.
But while they’re concerned about Mr. Robinson, there are limits to how much damage the Trump team believes any down-ballot candidate can do to the former president, even one with this level of self-inflicted damage. Mr. Trump is a unique political figure. It’s hard to find an American who doesn’t have a fixed opinion about him — and certainly of his character. He’s no stranger to weathering allegations of personal scandal.
Jared Kushner used to say to colleagues that his father-in-law was “a tie-dyed shirt — you spill wine on it, and it doesn’t matter.” A few extra stains — whether by his own doing or by others — almost never dramatically alter the public’s perception of Mr. Trump, since his earliest days as a candidate.
In 2022, Mr. Trump supported a string of candidates in midterm races who were controversial. Chief among them was Herschel Walker, a former football player who ran for a Senate seat in Georgia and was the subject of a series of accusations about his personal life during the campaign, including assertions that he had paid for a girlfriend’s abortion.
None of the allegations ended up damaging Mr. Trump, who was Mr. Walker’s most enthusiastic backer. But at the time, Mr. Trump was not a candidate himself.
Now, however, Mr. Trump is set to share a ballot with Mr. Robinson. And Democrats are eager to remind voters of that fact.
The former president has been reluctant to publicly turn against Mr. Robinson, who has said many nice things about him. Mr. Trump likes Mr. Robinson and has been impressed by his charisma, praising him as having the oratorical skills of a modern-day Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr. Robinson first caught the attention of people in Mr. Trump’s orbit a couple of years ago, when he delivered a screed against transgender people. His speech at a church opened with the line, “Ain’t but two genders.” The clip went viral online.
But after seeing recent polls in recent months — and the drag on the ticket that Mr. Robinson represented — Mr. Trump began distancing himself from the lieutenant governor, following the advice of his advisers.
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