Tangle - The Mark Robinson controversy.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 12 minutes.

The truth about crime.

Is crime in the United States getting better or worse? That question has become central to the 2024 presidential race, with candidates across the political spectrum blaming each other (or taking credit) for rising and falling crime. This week, we’re interviewing three crime experts with three different perspectives. In Friday’s members-only post, we’ll share their answers to our questions side-by-side so you can judge.

Quick hits.

1. Vice President Kamala Harris said she supports eliminating the Senate’s filibuster rule to pass legislation to restore abortion rights nationally. (The comments) Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) said he would not endorse Harris in response to the comments. (The statement)
2. President Joe Biden delivered his final address to the United Nations as president, affirming his support for Ukraine and expressing optimism that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is within reach. (The speech)
3. Israel said its air-defense systems intercepted a surface-to-surface missile launched by Hezbollah toward Tel Aviv. Separately, Israel announced it had killed senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Qubaisi in an airstrike in Beirut. (The latest) Tens of thousands of people fled Lebanon on Tuesday as Israel continues to conduct airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. (The flight)
4. The US Justice Department sued Visa, alleging that the company illegally monopolized the debit card market. (The lawsuit) 
5. The National Hurricane Center expects Hurricane Helene to further strengthen before making landfall on Florida's Gulf Coast Thursday. (The storm)

Today's topic.

Mark Robinson. On Thursday, CNN published an exclusive report on Mark Robinson, North Carolina's Lieutenant Governor and Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2024. In their piece, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck alleged that Robinson made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board over a decade ago, including calling himself a "black Nazi," expressing support for reinstating slavery, and describing his preference for pornography that included transgender women.

Kaczynski and Steck linked the comments to Robinson through an email address and the username "minisoldr," which he has used repeatedly for his public social media accounts. Robinson denies that this account was his.

Robinson worked in furniture manufacturing before entering politics when a clip of him defending gun rights at a city council meeting went viral. On the campaign trail, he often describes growing up in poverty, his religious renewal, and his challenges with bankruptcy. Robinson has been a rising star in the party for his speaking skills, and former President Trump called him “Martin Luther King Jr. on steroids” when endorsing Robinson in March.

The lieutenant governor also has a history of making incendiary comments. During his campaigns for lieutenant governor and governor, he has come under fire for once describing abortion as "killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down" (despite admitting his wife once had an abortion), proposing that trans women should be arrested for using women's restrooms, and making controversial comments about the Holocaust in a Facebook post. Robinson has also claimed Michelle Obama was secretly a man and once decried religious freedom because it "means Muslims are free to do as they please and anyone who says anything about it is a bigot."

However, the latest controversy linking him to an account on a pornographic website has created a wave of condemnation and staff departures. On Sunday, Robinson's campaign announced that Campaign Manager Chris Rodriguez, Finance Director Heather Whillier, Senior Adviser Conrad Pogorzelski III, and Deputy Campaign Manager Jason Rizk had all resigned, leaving his campaign almost completely devoid of staff. National Republican groups, like the Republican Governors Association, did not renew their financial support for him. Former President Trump has not pulled his endorsement of Robinson since the report was published, though his running mate JD Vance described Robinson’s comments as “pretty gross” on Monday and would not say whether the campaign still backed him. 

North Carolina has become a critical battleground in this year’s presidential race, with polls showing Trump and Harris are neck-and-neck. However, Robinson has consistently trailed his Democratic opponent, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein. While Trump has maintained a slight edge over Harris in North Carolina polling, one recent poll from Elon University found Stein leading Robinson by a 49% to 35% margin.

Robinson has vowed to rebuild his staff and continue on in the race. He has also promised to “come after” CNN full throttle, implying a potential lawsuit. 

Today, we are going to share some perspectives from the left and right on the report on Robinson and the state of the race in North Carolina. Then, my take.

Agreed.

• Both sides believe the report about Robinson and say his past behavior legitimizes the story. 
• Writers on the left and right agree that Robinson can only weigh Trump down in North Carolina, but they differ on the expected magnitude of his impact.

What the left is saying.

• The left says Republicans missed their chance to distance themselves from Robinson long ago. 
• Some suggest Robinson’s rise through the GOP is a direct result of Trump’s own ascent. 
• Others say Robinson could tip the scales in Harris’s favor. 

In MSNBC, Billy Ball said “in Mark Robinson’s fall, Republicans are getting what they asked for.” 

“CNN acknowledged many of the things Robinson is accused of writing were so lurid, they couldn’t be published. If these statements offend you, congratulations: You are a thinking, feeling person,” Ball wrote. “You’re holding your elected leaders to a higher standard than the North Carolina Republican Party, which doubled down on its support for Robinson on Thursday night after the report was published. Most folks wouldn’t let the guy in this story watch their dog, much less lead their state.”

“His candidacy was damaged and unhinged from the start, fetishizing violence, demonizing gay people and talking about women like they’re trash. The party has had literally dozens of opportunities to disavow Robinson,” Ball said. “North Carolina Republicans have shown that the MAGA movement doesn’t believe in such limits. But voters will, which is why Republicans and Robinson will stay this way, locked in a doomed embrace, through Election Day.”

In Bloomberg, Mary Ellen Klas called Robinson “another MAGA failure.”

“Robinson has denied writing any of it and vowed not to drop out of the race. But the statements are credible to anyone who knows about the stream of antisemitic, sexist and transphobic comments he posted on his Facebook page before he became lieutenant governor in 2020,” Klas wrote. “Robinson’s record of vitriol and hateful rhetoric should have disqualified anyone from being nominated to lead a state — especially one as politically significant as North Carolina. But none of that mattered to Tar Heel Republicans because of one person: Donald Trump.”

“Most MAGA supporters are indifferent to Trump’s history of sexual exploitation and lies. At the North Carolina Republican Party state convention in May, delegates I spoke with expressed indifference to Robinson’s negative personality traits, too,” Klas said. “They were deluded, just like Republicans in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia were when they nominated failed Trump sycophants Mehmet Oz, Doug Mastriano, Herschel Walker and Kari Lake in 2022. Robinson is just the latest data point.”

In The Washington Post, Aaron Blake asked “could Mark Robinson actually damage Trump?”

“With Robinson’s decision to press on, the question is less what it means for the governor’s race — in which Robinson already trailed by double digits in most quality polls — than what it means elsewhere. Most notably: Could this damage a Trump campaign that might have preferred to rid itself of this nuisance,” Blake wrote. “It’s complicated, but Robinson’s decision to stick it out gives the Trump campaign and Republicans reason to fret. North Carolina is crucial to Trump’s most readily apparent path to victory — which runs through it, Georgia and Pennsylvania — and every little bit counts.”

“The conventional wisdom is that things mostly happen in the opposite direction: a bad candidate at the top of the ticket harming candidates further down the ballot. After all, the presidential race is generally voters’ No. 1 priority,” Blake said. “But those two effects aren’t mutually exclusive, and just because one is more prominent doesn’t mean the other doesn’t exist. North Carolina was decided by just over one percentage point in 2020, so even a slight shift in voter preference or turnout caused by disillusionment with Robinson could matter.”

What the right is saying.

• The right is dismayed by the report but doubts that Robinson alone will sabotage Trump’s election chances. 
• Some say Trump’s candidacy could elevate Robinson despite the allegations.
• Others say Robinson is a product of Trump-era politics. 

National Review’s editors wrote about “the costly Mark Robinson lesson.”

“North Carolina gubernatorial race is lost, a month and half before it is even formally set to take place in November,” the editors said. “The most salacious of Robinson’s postings reveal the sorts of private sexual peccadilloes that cannot be discussed with dignity yet are politically fatal. Far more relevant to voter concerns were comments in which Robinson proudly labeled himself a ‘Black Nazi,’ or averred that he would happily own slaves himself if he could, such was his contempt for many of his fellow African Americans.”

“Some fret that Mark Robinson is so toxic that he threatens Donald Trump’s hold on a state he requires for any plausible, national electoral-victory scenario in November. It seems unlikely, though. That is not the way national elections typically work. It’s true that Trump is in danger of losing North Carolina, but if he does so it will be on his own demerits, not those of a downballot candidate long since given up for dead,” the editors wrote. “But it is appropriate to ask why Mark Robinson cruised to the GOP nomination in 2024 when the contents of his opposition file were already an open secret in state politics for years.”

In The Washington Examiner, Jeremiah Poff suggested “don’t write Mark Robinson’s political obituary just yet.”

“Robinson dubiously denies the allegations and has vowed to stay in the race, but for a candidate who has consistently trailed his Democratic opponent, state attorney general Josh Stein, the revelations of his online activity will do him no favors in a race he is widely expected to lose at this point,” Poff said. “But even as conventional wisdom indicates that the scandal-ridden Robinson is headed toward a historic defeat in a key swing-state gubernatorial race, any expectation that he is going to lose is premature. And the reason has nothing to do with him.”

“North Carolina is one of only a handful of states that holds its gubernatorial election at the same time as the presidential race. And in presidential years, the top of the ticket drives the campaign as voters associate the two political parties with their respective presidential candidates,” Poff wrote. “In an era where partisan divides are more pronounced than ever, voters have shown less and less willingness to vote for candidates from both parties in the same year. If Trump carries North Carolina on election night, his presence at the top of the ticket may be enough to drag Robinson’s long-decaying corpse of a campaign to the finish line in what would be an unexpected but predictable upset.”

In The New York Times, David French said “MAGA wants transgression, and this is what comes with it.”

“While I’m interested in Robinson’s potential impact on the presidential race, I’m also concerned with the ongoing impact of MAGA on the heart of the Republican Party,” French wrote. “The yearslong elevation of figures like Mark Robinson and the many other outrageous MAGA personalities, along with the devolution of people in MAGA’s inner orbit — JD Vance, Elon Musk, Lindsey Graham and so very many others — has established beyond doubt that Trump has changed the Republican Party and Republican Christians far more than they have changed him.

“In nine years, countless Republican primary voters have moved from voting for Trump in spite of his transgressions to rejecting anyone who doesn’t transgress. If you’re not transgressive, you’re suspicious. Decency is countercultural in the Republican Party. It’s seen as a rebuke of Trump,” French said. “Both parties have always been vulnerable to nominating or electing the occasional crank, but Donald Trump’s ascendance meant that a crank led the party, and the best way to join with him is to imitate him. That’s how you get a Mark Robinson.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Robinson definitely made these comments, and there is no defense for them.
• Voters really don’t like politicians who act differently in private, and it’s a wonder Robinson has made it this far in politics.
• Maybe 10-year-old internet comments are not the best judge of character, but I expect North Carolinians will strongly reject Robinson in November.

If his own team, Republican governors, and conservative financiers are abandoning him, you'll be unsurprised to hear that a middle-of-the-road person like me has no defense for Robinson.

Let’s start with something the left and right pundits didn’t get into: The porn site account is quite obviously Robinson's. His denials and explanations are totally insufficient; the unique username was associated with his public accounts across YouTube, Twitter, Disqus, Pinterest, Black Planet, and porn websites like Nude Africa. CNN even cross-referenced unique phrases that Robinson commonly used in his public social media posts (such as, “I don’t give a frogs fat behind”) and matched them to posts made on the porn site. Robinson made the comments, and he got caught. 

Aside from the obvious offensiveness in the content of his comments (like wishing for the return of slavery), Robinson did one of the most offensive things to voters a candidate can do: obviously disingenuous politicking, or showing a different character when the cameras aren’t on. Robinson has made stopping abortion a major campaign issue, but he made shallow, blithe jokes about abortion in private. He talks in public about jailing trans women for using the girls' bathroom, but he posted about how much he loves their pornography. He denies allegations of antisemitism as a media smear, but in private has called himself a “black Nazi.” 

However, I’m less concerned with his comments than by how he got this far in the first place. The Republican Party has blamed its recent election losses on a lot of things, ranging from the reasonable (a pandemic that few world leaders handled well) to the unreasonable (baseless and still-unproven claims of election fraud). But one of the biggest reasons they keep losing elections is that candidates like Mark Robinson keep getting the party's support, winning primary races, and then running headfirst into the reality of a general election.

Robinson, in the most simple and basic terms, is not very likable. He is a conspiratorial crank who spends a lot of time saying and doing awful things. This is not a partisan opinion; we surveyed over 20 opinion pieces from conservative writers for today’s edition and didn’t find a single one defending him.

He's trafficked in Holocaust denial. He called the teenage survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting "spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN" and "media prosti-tots" because of their turn to advocacy after surviving a mass shooting. He said mass shootings are karma for abortion. He promoted conspiracy theories — that Michelle Obama is a man, that Barack Obama isn't American, that Bill Cosby was taken down by the Illuminati, and that the Summer Olympics opening ceremony contained hidden occult symbols, just to name a few.

Along with the Nude Africa account (where he left comments about cheating on his wife with her sister), he also had an email registered on Ashley Madison, the website designed for married people seeking affairs. All these revelations about him just reek of low character.

Which is a shame, because on paper there is plenty to like: Robinson was raised in poverty and through the foster care system, then went on to launch a successful career. He studied in school while working full time to become a history teacher. He served in the Army Reserve. His story, simply put, is one of resilience. His foray into politics came through happenstance — and his gift for public speaking. If a person with his resume became North Carolina’s first black governor — a person who climbed out of poverty and the foster care system all the way to the governor’s mansion — that would have been a helluva story to tell.  

My hottest take about any of this is that something feels invasive about mining a candidate's comments in shadowy internet corners like adult websites. I'm impressed by CNN's sleuths, but also a little uncomfortable about this kind of journalism. As easy (and valid) as it is to contrast the comments he made on the Nude Africa website with his current political stances, those comments are also a decade old. People's views change, and their comportment changes. Robinson himself claims to have undergone a religious renewal. I have no idea what he believes today and how genuine his campaign is, but I don’t think his posts on an internet porn forum 10 years ago are the best way to judge his “real” views.

The bottom line is that none of that excuses him. When you run for public office, you agree to turn your life inside out. Robinson made that agreement. Then he made the decision to embrace anger and divisiveness, to spread genuine conspiracy theories, and to run a scorched-earth campaign. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost, and everything we’re learning through this reporting aligns with what we’ve already seen throughout his campaign.

He'll lose in North Carolina because, thankfully, voters in our country still reject candidates like him more often than they rally behind them. I'm sure he'll find something to blame — fraud, the Jews, the Obamas, the media, maybe even his fellow Republicans who are jumping ship on his candidacy. But the only person truly responsible will be Mark Robinson.

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Your questions, answered.

Do you have any resources for middle school students to learn about politics and proper ways to research and develop opinions? I want to do lessons that are similar to your newsletter, where the 2 sides are laid out, then an opinion is given at the end, but the wording is far too advanced for my students. I am a 6th grade history teacher in a Title I (very poor) area.

— Brooke from Flower Mound, TX

Tangle: That’s a very good question, and the answer is both that there are a lot of resources that do something similar to what we’re doing, but I don’t know of one doing exactly what we’re doing. That is, a lot of places give a comparison on what the right and left are saying about a given issue, but not many are following that up with an editorial.

At risk of doing some free advertising for our competitors, The Flip Side runs a subscribers-only left/right newsletter; The New York Times has a subscribers-only feature that compares the left and right; Ground News (a former partner of ours) aggregates sources on a given story and lays them out from left to right so you can see them yourself. The Week, which I’d describe as a more establishment-focused weekly magazine version of Tangle, also has a magazine for kids.

Good on you for looking for ways to introduce your students to media bias and diverse viewpoints early on in their education. It may be a hard target to hit, as editorial bias is a pretty advanced concept, but I can see how getting a few sources plus an editorial would be engaging in a classroom setting. I know many young people get their news from social media — maybe you can compare a few examples from Instagram as a way to look for bias? 

Internally, we’ve discussed launching some kind of YouTube channel or news source for younger Americans, but it’s probably pretty far down the road. In the meantime, feel free to repurpose any Tangle material that could be helpful. If anyone reading is a middle-school teacher or knows one doing something similar, please leave an answer in the comments today. I’d be curious to know how other teachers are trying to do this. Good luck to you, Brooke!

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Under the radar.

Americans’ views on the economy in September declined by the largest level in more than three years, according to the Conference Board’s consumer confidence index. The Board is a nonprofit, nonpartisan economic research group that tracks consumer attitudes about the U.S. economy, and its latest report found that the confidence index fell from 105.6 to 98.7 between August and September, the largest drop since August 2021. Survey respondents aged 35-54 and those earning less than $50,000 reported the largest decline, but respondents in all categories said concerns over the labor market and inflation informed their feelings about the economic outlook. Notably, however, the survey was conducted one day before the Fed voted to lower benchmark interest rates by a half percentage point. CNBC has the story. 

Numbers.

Clarification: In yesterday’s Numbers section, we shared two figures on the percentage of U.S. federal debt held by the public in 2000 and 2024 but did not specify that these percentages were in terms of U.S. GDP. We apologize for any confusion.

• +10%. Josh Stein’s average lead over Mark Robinson in polls released in September for the North Carolina gubernatorial race. 
• 13%. The percentage of Republican voters in North Carolina who said they planned to vote for Josh Stein in an August 2024 Fox News poll. 
• +0.5%. Donald Trump’s current lead over Kamala Harris in North Carolina (based on an aggregate of polls). 
• 16. The number of Electoral College votes North Carolina will allocate in 2024. 
• 1. The number of presidential elections since 1976 in which the Democratic candidate has won North Carolina (Barack Obama in 2008). 
• 50%. The percentage of North Carolina voters who said they had unfavorable views of Robinson in an August 2024 poll from Elon University.
• 30%. The percentage of North Carolina voters who said they had favorable views of Robinson in August 2024.
• -30%. Robinson’s net favorability rating with women in North Carolina in August 2024.

The extras.

• One year ago today we were off for Yom Kippur.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the NYT/Siena poll showing Trump up in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina.
• Nothing to do with politics: The last of eight escaped bulls was captured in Massachusetts.
• Yesterday’s survey: 1,119 readers responded to our survey on the funding bill and SAVE Act with 82% in favor of passing funding without the SAVE Act. “A funding bill should only be about funding. Congress should stop these last minute scares of government shutdown,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

After moving to the United States from Ghana, Francis Apraku began work as a janitor at a Virginia high school. Students at the school described him as “super kind and friendly” and noted that he “even says prayers for us.” Before his birthday, a group of sophomore boys asked Apraku what he would like as a birthday gift. Speaking in jest, he said he wanted a new Jeep. But the students got to work. The boys created a GoFundMe campaign and were able to raise enough money to buy Apraku a red Jeep Wrangler. When they gave it to him, Apraku gratefully said, “This day, the ninth of September, I will never forget.” Good News Network has the story.

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