Why Trump Is Suddenly Terrified of Mark Robinson’s Campaign

North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson’s latest campaign scandal may seriously scare Donald Trump, but not because of what Robinson allegedly did. It’s because the former president is already struggling to defend the Southern state from Kamala Harris.

In an exclusive interview with MeidasTouch, Democratic analyst Simon Rosenberg offered his read of the situation unfolding in the Tar Heel State.

“In 2022, the Republicans flooded the battleground states with polling that was three to four points more Republican than the independent polls, and they pushed the averages, you know, into making the election look much more Republican,” Rosenberg said, noting that these inflated numbers were at the “core of the false red wave.”

Rosenberg said that in the last week, the same pollsters had become focused on the Tar Heel State.

“In the last week, we’ve seen five polls drop in North Carolina,” Rosenberg said. “They’re clearly worried about North Carolina. Something’s happening there. Because the five independent polls that we’ve had in the last two weeks have Harris either tied or ahead in North Carolina, in every one of the polls. In the five Republican polls, Trump is ahead.”

TrendingPolitics and the Trafalgar Group, two Republican-funded polling groups, released polls this week that found Trump in the lead by two points in North Carolina. A survey by American Greatness, a conservative news organization, found that Trump had a three-point lead there.

Meanwhile, a Morning Consult poll found Harris up by two points in North Carolina, and an Emerson College poll found that Harris was polling even with Trump.

“If you read it backwards, it means they’re very worried about what’s happening there,” Rosenberg said, noting that North Carolina was one of the “bright spots” for Democrats.

All of this Republican scrambling is thrown into sharp relief by Thursday’s bombshell report revealing that Robinson, a Trump ally, had allegedly written on a pornography website’s message board about wanting to own slaves, peeping in women’s locker rooms, and enjoying transgender porn.

North Carolina is a particularly crucial battleground state in the upcoming election. If Harris is unable to win Pennsylvania, then she must secure both North Carolina and Georgia for a chance at 270 electoral college votes.

Last week, the Republican National Committee and North Carolina’s Republican Party sued the state’s Board of Elections to limit acceptable forms of voter identification. In North Carolina, in-person early voting begins October 17.

Donald Trump made antisemitic remarks at an event about combating antisemitism.

During an appearance Thursday at the Israeli American Council’s national conference, the theme of which is “Fighting Anti-Semitism in America,” Trump said that Jewish voters would be to blame if he didn’t win the presidential election.

“If I don’t win this election, and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because at 40 percent that means 60 percent of the people are voting for the enemy,” Trump said, “Israel will cease to exist in two years.”

The former president repeated his threat and claimed that Jewish voters supporting Harris were responsible for putting their safety at risk.

“I will put it to you very simply, and gently. I really haven’t been treated right, but you haven’t been treated right, because you’ve been putting yourself in great danger,” said Trump.

The former president said that if he doesn’t win the election, “in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss. If I’m at 40 percent. Think of it. That means 60 percent are voting for Kamala who in particular is a bad Democrat. The Democrats are bad to Israel, very bad.”

In addition to positioning Jewish voters as a scapegoat for a potential loss, the former president used some of his stage time to scold Jewish voters for not supporting him in the past.

“With all I have done for Israel, I received only 24 percent of the vote,” Trump said. “But I understood that. That was in 2016. And you know, one of those things, I thought I’d do much better. I happen to have a Jewish daughter, I have a Jewish son-in-law. I have three Jewish grandchildren. I thought I’d do much better.”

The Republican nominee also repeated his insanely offensive line that “any Jewish person who votes for [Harris] should have their head examined.”

Jewish voters’ skepticism of Trump is understandable, though, considering he associates with self-proclaimed “Black Nazi” Mark Robinson and known Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes.

As an equal opportunity offender, Trump made some wildly Islamophobic and xenophobic remarks too. He repeated his well-worn racist quip calling Senator Chuck Schumer a Palestinian. “What the hell happened to him? I saw him the other day, he was dressed in one of their robes,” Trump joked. “No! That’ll be next.”

Trump also said that if elected, he planned to deport “foreign jihad sympathizers and Hamas supporters,” and pledged not to take any refugees from “terror-infested” Gaza. The former president also promised to bring back his administration’s travel ban, which prevented people from Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

The presidential election is less than two months away, and just like in 2020, the postal system may play a pivotal role in determining the outcome.

An NBC News investigation published Thursday found that the slowest mail in the country is in battleground states, many of which have strict deadlines on when ballots can be counted. “It’s a disgrace,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told NBC, referencing recent mail delivery issues with the United States Postal Service. “They need to understand the importance [of election mail], and they need to make no more excuses.”

Georgia, a state that Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020, has the worst mail delivery rate in the United States, with only 66 percent of local first-class letters since July being delivered within two days. Less than 40 percent of election mail was delivered on time last spring, according to NBC, with more than 3 percent of all mailed-in votes in the primary elections last year being rejected for arriving late. In 2020, only 0.23 percent of ballots were rejected for being late.

State and local officials from more than 20 states on Wednesday warned that mail delays could result in many votes failing to reach election offices in time to be counted, and urged swift action. In a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the officials said that mail sent to voters is being marked as undeliverable at above-normal rates. 

“State and local election officials need a committed partner in USPS,” the letter states. “We implore you to take immediate and tangible corrective action to address the ongoing performance issues with USPS election mail service. Failure to do so will risk limiting voter participation and trust in the election process.”

In April, DeJoy promised senators to “fix” Georgia’s problems “within 60 days,” but Georgia’s mail performance is still poor five months later. On Monday, DeJoy claimed that the Postal Service was prepared for the coming election, but that didn’t stop Donald Trump Monday night from threatening to sue the USPS in an attempt to discredit mail-in voting. 

DeJoy has faced criticism and calls to step down since 2020, after he instituted so-called reforms that he claimed were meant to modernize the postal system but ended up slowing down mail delivery. Critics believe DeJoy is deliberately undermining the Postal Service to push a privatization agenda and have been urging Biden to fire him for years. (This would be difficult to do, but it is not, as some claim, impossible.) In any case, DeJoy’s  lack of action has led to mail remaining slower than ever and even getting worse.  

In August, Biden nominated former Representative Val Demings and business executive William Zollars to fill two vacant slots on the USPS Board of Governors, which would give the board a Democratic majority and the ability to fire DeJoy. But those appointments, along with the appointment of former Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh in March, have yet to be confirmed by the Senate.  

The New Republic’s Alex Pareene argued in 2021 that Biden could break with norms and bypass the Board of Governors to fire DeJoy, but the president has not done so. Now the president’s lack of action could cause chaos in the coming presidential election.  

A Project 2025 adviser was exposed Thursday in a congressional hearing for defending slavery in Haiti. 

Mark Krikorian, an adviser for the right-wing manifesto, is the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a right-wing organization described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group with a history of promoting eugenics. Representative Greg Casar, a progressive Democrat, pointed out that in 2010, Kirkorian wrote an article for the conservative National Review magazine defending French colonization in the country. 

“I’ll ask you, Mr. Krikorian, and I know you’re a Project 2025 board member, your recent quote from a few years ago, where you said, quote, ‘Haiti is so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.’ Is that correct, did you say that?” Casar said to Krikorian.  

“I’m happy to talk about that all you want,” Krikorian replied. Casar responded by noting Haiti’s history as a French slave plantation until the slaves revolted in 1791, ultimately winning independence in 1804.

“The French colonized Haiti so that slaves would work on plantations. The end of colonization in Haiti was so that the people there would no longer be slaves. So what you’re saying, and I read your quote, and anybody watching this online should go read it—what you’re saying is it would have been good if they’d stayed colonized, which means it would’ve been good if they had stayed enslaved by the French,” Casar said.

Krikorian stumbled in his response, trying to explain that Haiti wasn’t better off for having gained independence earlier.  

“They had every right to throw the French out,” Krikorian said. “My point is, they would have been free 30 years later, they would have been in the same situation as—”

“You’re saying you wanted 30 more years of slavery in Haiti,” Casar said. 

The hearing from the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability was ironically titled “A Legacy of Incompetence: Consequences of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Policy Failures.” Krikorian was ostensibly called as a witness by Republicans to show Democratic failures on immigration. Instead, he was called out for his organization’s history of promoting white supremacists and Holocaust deniers.

Republicans have been criticized in the past several weeks for promoting a disproven, racist conspiracy that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are capturing and eating pets, ducks, and geese. As Casar pointed out Thursday, those conspiracy theories have their roots in the writings of extremist right-wing ideologues, whose old racist beliefs are influencing Republican policy today.  

The Trump-endorsed candidate in North Carolina’s gubernatorial race could soon lose his spot on the ticket due to an in-house ouster.

North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson is a Hitler-quoting, gay-bashing, conspiracy-touting antisemite, and has drawn immediate comparisons to Donald Trump for his bombastic orations and loyal GOP following, along with his own laundry list of controversies.

On Thursday, a bombshell CNN report revealed that Robinson had written on a pornography website’s message board about his desire to own slaves, his peeping in women’s locker rooms, and his enjoyment of transgender porn.

The comments were made long before Robinson entered electoral politics. CNN connected the account to Robinson via a “litany” of common biographical details and a shared email address. He also used his full name on his site account.

“I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson wrote in one comment on the site, Nude Africa. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”

Robinson repeatedly denied any connection to the account, instead telling CNN in an interview that the story amounted to “salacious tabloid lies.”

The story was initially leaked to CNN, as well as local Raleigh news outlet WRAL, by Robinson’s opponent, Attorney General Josh Stein, the Carolina Journal reported.

In light of the story, the Trump campaign reportedly told Robinson that he was no longer welcome to attend rallies for either candidate on the Republican presidential ticket, according to an anonymous source that spoke with the Journal. Robinson had been scheduled to appear at a rally for J.D. Vance on Wednesday but backed out after his office announced Robinson had fallen ill.

But despite growing pressure to back out—which included calls from local Republican strategists for Robinson to exit in order to save Trump’s chances in the battleground state—Robinson released a video statement ahead of the CNN report announcing his intention to stay in the critical race.

“Let me reassure you the things that you will see in that story are not the words of Mark Robinson,” Robinson said. “You know my words, you know my character, and you know that I have been completely transparent in this race and before.”

That butts Robinson up against the deadline to withdraw from the race: Thursday evening. If he does exit, the North Carolina Republican Party Executive Committee would be required to choose a replacement candidate—less than 50 days before the election.

The scandal is an unusual test of mettle for the exceedingly controversial politico. Robinson has shared a host of his disturbing positions online, including posts in which he minimized the horrors of the Holocaust, claimed a “satanic marxist” had made the movie Black Panther to pull “shekels” out of Black audiences, likened women getting abortions to murderers, and derided gay people as “filth” and “maggots.” Robinson has also expressed archaic views about women’s role in society, telling a Charlotte-area church in 2022 that Christians are “called to be led by men.”

Robinson has also suggested that “schools wouldn’t be getting shot up” if Christian teachings were forced into the classroom, and told a congregation at Asbury Baptist Church that public schools had taken a “nosedive” since mandatory prayer had been excised from curriculums.