Mark Robinson Files Wild, Dangerous Lawsuit Over Racist Porn Comments

North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson finally addressed accusations against him of wild impropriety Tuesday morning, weeks after a bombshell CNN report revealed that the MAGA politico had made a slew of disturbing comments on a pornographic messaging board prior to his foray into politics.

The brief, sparsely attended press conference featured just Robinson and his attorney, Jesse Binnall. The outlandish Republican announced his intention to sue the “left-wing” news outlet for defamation, seeking $50 million in damages for “reputational harm” over what he described as a “high-tech lynching.”

The CNN report, released in September, revealed Robinson had allegedly commented on websites about his desire to own slaves, peeping in womens’ locker rooms, and enjoying transgender porn. The outlet tied 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. The revelation saw a swift, mass exodus of Robinson’s campaign staffers after he refused multiple offers from I.T. specialists to help him investigate the origin of the comments.

In an attempt to wipe away the impact of the early October surprise, Robinson on Tuesday criticized the report’s publication as “one of the greatest examples of political interference in this state’s history and quite possibly this nation’s history.” Binnall, who worked for Donald Trump for several years and helped push the former president’s 2020 election conspiracy, argued that CNN had violated “journalistic standards” and “interfered with this election.”

The Republican gubernatorial nominee’s case will, of course, require evidence that the report had materially damaged his reputation, which was already considered pretty extreme due to Robinson’s openness about his other beliefs, including that he didn’t think schools would be getting “shot up” if they mandated instruction of the Bible in the classroom and that some people just “need killing!”

Robinson has also shared a host of his other 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.”

But the dynamic duo of Robinson and his attorney had no smart response as to why the party had seemingly abandoned him in light of the latest slew of accusations.

“If your proof is so good, then why aren’t other Republicans standing with you? You’re by yourself,” one reporter asked.

“We stand with the voters—or, Governor Robinson stands with the voters of North Carolina,” Binnall said. “We’re going to go make our case in court. This case is for a jury.”

Donald Trump ended his town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, early Monday night and bizarrely made everyone watch him listen to music for nearly 40 minutes onstage.

Trump concluded the event after a few questions and a couple of medical emergencies in the crowd, despite telling his supporters that he would take more questions. Operatic music then started playing as Trump stood onstage, swaying and occasionally pretending to conduct the music.

The event bizarrely went on with Trump standing awkwardly onstage as “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” played. The crowd seemed to be either sitting and waiting for something else, or they began to sway like they were at a concert. Trump then said he wanted to take more questions but changed his mind and asked for “YMCA” to be played, “nice and loud,” to wrap up the event.

But strangely, the event didn’t end there. Trump continued to stay onstage as what seemed to be his campaign playlist kept playing, running through songs like “Hallelujah,” “Nothing Compares 2 U,” “Rich Men North of Richmond,” and “November Rain.” Then finally, he gave South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem a kiss and stepped offstage.

It’s the latest, and strangest, example of Trump showing clear signs of mental decline, even as he insists otherwise. Just over a week ago at a rally, he struggled to pronounce words like “Midwestern” and “evangelicals,” and compared himself to a fly. His speech patterns and alertness seem to have gotten worse, with cognitive experts seeing compelling evidence that he is much less alert now.

While the media is finally starting to give the issue attention, it remains to be seen if Monday’s bizarre rally will be framed correctly. The Republican presidential nominee is not well, but so far, news coverage seems to ignore all of the clear warning signs.

In the swing state of Georgia, a judge has ruled that election officials cannot refuse to certify election results.

In the groundbreaking ruling on Monday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney stated that “certifying election results … is mandatory.”

“No election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.”

Obviously, the judge noted, county election officials have the duty to “investigate concerns about miscounts.”  But otherwise, election officials have a duty to certify the results no later than 5 p.m. on the Monday following the election.

The ruling aims to put a stop to any unnecessary delay or holdup thanks to election deniers. Fulton County was the epicenter of Donald Trump’s 2020 scheme to overturn the election. 

McBurney’s ruling came after Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, challenged her duty to certify election results. Legal challenges like this one have played an important role in the GOP’s “election integrity” efforts going into November, as election deniers are filing lawsuits across the country to change election procedures.

“If election superintendents were, as Plaintiff urges, free to play investigator, prosecutor, jury, and judge and so—because of a unilateral determination of error or fraud—refuse to certify election results, Georgia voters would be silenced,” wrote the judge.

Earlier this year, Fulton County was given an independent election monitor in response to the issues that arose during the 2020 presidential election. At least 19 county election officials, most Republican, have voted not to certify election results since then, according to an investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Trump has actively cheered on these officials.

This ruling has thrown a wrench in efforts to suppress election results in the state in November. Another similar ruling is still pending in a separate case filed by state and national Democrats.

Donald Trump can’t seem to handle sharing the limelight with his Democratic opponent.

The Republican presidential nominee is still obsessing about Vice President Kamala Harris’s media appearances more than a week after she lured millions of Americans to CBS with her traditional preelection 60 Minutes interview—something that Trump practically chickened out of over the network’s intent to fact-check.

“I’ve done 60 Minutes many times, even back in the good ol’ days when Journalism was respected and legit, but I have never seen a very poor answer being REPLACED by another, totally unrelated answer, in order to save the person great personal and professional embarrassment,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday morning, referring to an instance in which the legacy show appeared to edit one of her answers on Israel.

“What 60 Minutes did in doing this was Election Interference and Fraud. It is the worst and most blatant scandal in Broadcast History, and will not be soon forgotten. Just watch!”

A few hours before, very late Monday night, Trump attempted to rewrite recent history in another portion of his digital tirade. He claimed that Harris had rejected a potential second presidential debate when, in truth, Trump aggressively backed out of going toe-to-toe with the vice president again after his disastrous performance in the first round—something that alarmed Republican donors.

But Trump’s rant featured some definitively weird turns, as well. In a post made past midnight, Trump claimed that Harris had made “desperate requests” for his medical records, specifically about his cholesterol, which he promised was “flawless.” He then proceeded to argue that he had, in turn, seen Harris’s health report.

“However, I have just seen Kamala’s Report,” he wrote, “and it is not good. According to her Doctor’s Report, she suffers from ‘urticaria,’ defined as ‘a rash of round, red welts on the skin that itch intensely, sometimes with dangerous swelling.’ She also has ‘allergic rhinitis and allergic conjunctivitis,’ a very messy and dangerous situation,” Trump wrote about Harris’s allergies.

But of course, the MAGA politico couldn’t let the mention slip without circling back to the prime-time interview Harris got under her belt that he couldn’t bring himself to do.

“These are deeply serious conditions that clearly impact her functioning,” Trump said. “Maybe that is why she can’t answer even the simplest of questions asked by 60 Minutes, and others. What is this all about? I don’t have these problems.”

JD Vance credited Donald Trump for his family being able to get off of Medicaid and onto private health insurance, at the vice presidential debate earlier this month. But he isn’t telling the whole story: that it was due to Obamacare.

Vance’s mother was able to buy private insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplace, run by Ohio, after overcoming substance abuse, becoming financially stable, and earning too much to stay on Medicaid. At the debate, Vance was also referring to a cousin in Florida who got private insurance through the state marketplace, a campaign spokesperson told The Washington Post.

Vance said that Trump fixed a lot of issues with the ACA after Republicans failed to repeal the bill early in his presidency. But this belies the fact that Vance’s family members reaped the benefits of the ACA despite Trump and the rest of the GOP repeatedly attempting to undermine, and then remove, it.

If Trump had been successful, the ACA and its marketplaces would not exist in their current form, if at all, said Andrew Sprung, an independent health analyst, to The Washington Post.

“If any Vance family members transitioned to the marketplace because they earned out of Medicaid, they should be grateful that Trump and Republicans in Congress failed to repeal and replace the marketplace with an alternative that would have provided far less affordable coverage,” Sprung said.

Vance’s current praise of Trump also goes against what he was saying in 2017, when the then president and Republicans in Congress were trying to repeal and replace the bill. Back then, Vance said that Republicans’ proposals would hurt low-income Americans.

“The ‘full repeal’ bill is nothing of the sort—it preserves the regulatory structure of Obamacare, but withdraws its supports for the poor,” Vance wrote in a column for The New York Times seven years ago.

Vance’s health care proposals, like Trump’s,  essentially bring back health insurance companies’ ability to charge more for preexisting conditions. This would hurt the same low-income Americans Vance was supposedly concerned about in 2017, and stick older Americans with those conditions with a higher bill, and that could include Vance’s family members.