The senior Senate Republican Lindsey Graham has said reports that the North Carolina Republican candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, calling himself a “black NAZI!” in posts on the porn forum Nude Africa a decade ago are “beyond unnerving” and should see him end his political career if proven true.
“If they’re true, he’s unfit to serve for office,” the long-serving South Carolina senator said Sunday. “If they’re not true, he has the best lawsuit in the history of the country for libel.”
But Graham stopped short of calling for Robinson, who has denied claims made by CNN that the incendiary entries on the forum are his own, to step down from his bid for the state governorship or that Donald Trump, who has called Robinson “Martin Luther King on steroids”, should drop his endorsement of the candidate.
“I think what’s going to happen here is that he deserves a chance to defend himself,” Graham said. “He’s claiming they were artificially created.”
Graham advised Robinson, who has a history of controversial and racist statements, to “hire me the best lawyer I could find. I’d sue the hell out of CNN, because what they’re saying about him is just unbelievable.”
But Graham said Robinson “needs to do more … he has a right to defend himself. He has an obligation to defend himself. This is hanging over his campaign.” But he said he did not think that the Trump protege’s comments “hurt Trump”.
“But as to Robinson, he’s a political zombie if he does not offer a defense to this that’s credible,” Graham added.
Robinson’s alleged porn site comments dominated the US Sunday talkshows, a day after Trump held a rally for 10,000 supporters in North Carolina without mentioning Robinson or the candidate appearing on stage.
“These are not my words and this is not anything characteristic of me,” Robinson, who is the first Black lieutenant governor of North Carolina, has said of the alleged posts. He has said that he intends to remain in the race.
Robinson’s opponent, the state attorney general Josh Stein, told CNN that his opponent’s “vile insults” made him “utterly unqualified” to be governor.
“What he said in the posts is in keeping with what he has said publicly on Facebook” Stein said. “He embraced Hitler, he compliments Hitler, he says he’s a Nazi, he buys little toy SS soldiers, he insists he wants to bring back slavery … things that defy comprehension.”
One of Robinson’s alleged comments on the site, which was made while Barack Obama was in the White House, included: “I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now!” and “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring [slavery] back. I would certainly buy a few.”
The controversy over Robinson’s alleged comments come as North Carolina, a typically red state, is a must-win state for Trump if he is to reach the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the White House.
Polls show Stein averaging about a 10-point lead over Robinson, but other Democratic candidates on the ballot in the state, including the presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, are in tighter races.
How far Robinson’s alleged comments will affect Trump’s support is unknown, but Democrats are hoping to tie them to Republican campaigns locally and nationally.
The North Carolina Democratic party chair, Anderson Clayton, has said Robinson is a “standard bearer” amid signs that local Republicans will stand by their candidate. “He represents their party … The rest of the Republican ticket would serve as nothing but a rubber stamp for his agenda,” she said.
On Sunday, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie told ABC This Week that a controversy of Robinson was “predictable” because Robinson’s tenure in public life “has shown erratic, sometimes highly offensive statements over and over again”.
But Christie acknowledged that it was a problem for Republicans because “as Donald Trump is your recruiting agent for candidates in swing states, we’re going to continue to get our rear ends handed to us.”
Christie said he doubted that other Republicans would be affected, a political concept know as “reverse coattails”, but said Robinson “is starting to get the feel for what it’s like to have been a former friend of Donald Trump’s”.
He added: “Donald Trump, from a political perspective, smells rotting flesh better than anybody you’ll ever find ... And I bet you, George, before we get to November 5, he’s going to claim to not even really know who Mark Robinson is.”
• This article was amended on 24 September 2024. An earlier version said that Josh Stein is a “former” state attorney general when he is still serving as one.
