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JD Vance struggled to answer coherently when asked about Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina who is at the center of damning claims.
Robinson was the subject of a report by CNN’s KFile unit last week which alleges he has an extensive history of comments made on a porn site called “Nude Africa” under an email address and username both known to be linked to him.
The comments, which touched on a wide range of topics, were outrageous and shocking — in one, he reportedly referred to himself as a “Black Nazi.” Robinson claims he did not write the comments and denies the allegations.
When Vance was asked about it on the campaign trail, he struggled to give a straight answer on whether he believed Robinson.
“I don’t not believe him, I don’t believe him — I just think that you have to let these things sometimes play out in the court of public opinion,” he told NBC News.
“The allegations are pretty far out there, of course, but I know that allegations aren’t necessarily reality,” Donald Trump’s running mate also said. “I just think that fundamentally it’s Mark Robinson and the people of North Carolina that get to decide whether he’s their governor.”
When asked whether Vance or Trump would appear on stage with Robinson, the Ohio senator said they “don’t have any plans” to appear with him or campaign with him again.
“When we go to places typically we hold our own events,” he said.
Trump has appeared with Robinson before and has regularly praised him in public, at one point calling him Martin Luther King “on steroids.”
Robinson has hinted he might take legal action against CNN. On the campaign trail, Robinson was asked by reporters if he had “taken steps” to prove the claims reported by CNN’s investigation are untrue.
“We absolutely are,” he said. “We absolutely are. We’re in talks right now, everything up to legal counsel to take CNN to task for what they have done to us. We are going after them, okay?”
Robinson has faced calls from his fellow Republicans to prove that CNN defamed him with false information or drop out of the race.
Over the weekend things escalated further when a statement from the Robinson campaign indicated his entire senior staff had resigned.
Trump kept Robinson at arm’s length while on a campaign visit to the state on Saturday. At the beginning of his rally in Wilmington, Trump gave a shout-out to numerous North Carolina Republican officials but notably left off Robinson.
