Vice President Harris’s campaign quickly posted clips of former President Trump praising North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R) following a bombshell CNN report on the GOP North Carolina gubernatorial candidate.
Harris’s campaign posted a video on the social platform X of clips of Trump praising Robinson, including one notable moment from March at a rally in Greensboro, when the former president referred to the North Carolina lieutenant governor as “Martin Luther King times two.”
“I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two,” the former president said at the time.
The video from the Harris campaign came only eight minutes after the CNN story was published.
The CNN report unveiled a large span of inflammatory comments that Robinson reportedly made on a pornography website’s message board more than 10 years ago, like calling himself a “black NAZI.”
In an email to The Hill, Mike Lonergan, a communications director for Robinson’s campaign, linked to a video the lieutenant governor posted on X before the CNN article was published in which he alleged that his Democratic rival Josh Stein’s campaign leaked the story to the outlet.
“Josh Stein has a long track record of lying to North Carolina voters,” Lonergan said in the email. “Stein’s false daycare ads & his desperately dishonest claims about a Board of Education vote are just more of the same dishonesty we’ve come to expect from Josh Stein and his desperate campaign."
On Thursday, Robinson said he’s staying in the gubernatorial race following speculation that he might drop out.
Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa also posted a photo featuring Trump and Robinson on X shortly after the CNN publication.
“Just a picture of Donald Trump and Mark Robinson - for no particular reason,” Moussa captioned the post, only four minutes after the story was published.
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign.