And I regret to inform you that I haven’t even gotten into his graphic, sexual comments. Robinson, who has a long history of anti-LGBTQ and wildly transphobic policy positions, wrote at one point, “I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s fucking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in! And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!” Speaking of being a self-identified “perv,” he also wrote about peeping on women’s locker rooms on at least two occasions: “I came to a spot that was a dead end but had two big vent covers over it! It just so happened it overlooked the showers! I sat there for about an hour and watched as several girls came in and showered.” However, when he returned for a third time, Robinson mourned that “the ladder” he used to look at the women “was locked! So those two times where [sic] the only times I got to do it! Ahhhhh memories!!!!” Err, my condolences, Sir.
Since CNN’s report, social media users have uncovered a range of other graphic sexual posts associated with Robinson’s alleged account, including one where he describes his affinity for golden showers in appalling detail, and several posts where he describes cheating on his wife with her sister, also in appalling detail. I, uh… I’ll let you read those on your own time, hopefully somewhere far from the presence of impressionable children.
Shortly after CNN’s report, Politico reported that Robinson’s email was linked to Ashley Madison, the notorious website for married people seeking out affairs. An unnamed adviser to Robinson confirmed to Politico that it was Robinson’s email, but his campaign denied the report and claimed he was hacked.
How CNN identified Robinson
I want to preface this by saying it’s frankly terrifying that someone who holds Robinson’s beliefs can succeed to the extent that he has in American politics. That said, there is some undeniable comedy in all of this. Case in point: how the sleuths at CNN linked Robinson with “minisoldr.” First, they linked the user’s email to Robinson, which is straightforward enough. They also found the same username on a variety of other online platforms including Pinterest and YouTube, all featuring photos or videos of Robinson.
And then, there are all the other ways. CNN matched a trove of biographical details shared between “minisoldr” and Robinson—date of birth, place of residence at the time the user was active, when they got married, details about his mother’s place of employment, and more. And, hilariously, Robinson told on himself by consistently being an almost incomprehensible weirdo. CNN identified numerous, extremely odd and unique phrases used by “minisoldr” that Robinson has publicly posted on social media—for example, the phrase “I don’t give a frog’s fat ass,” or “I don’t give two shakes,” as well as other inexplicable terms like “gag a maggot” and “dunder head.” It’s pretty hard to fight evidence that incriminating, but nonetheless, Robinson is trying his best to do so.
How Robinson & the GOP are responding
Shortly before CNN’s report dropped, Robinson issued a preemptive video denial, which is something innocent people famously do all the time. In the video, Robinson writes off CNN’s extensively reported article as “salacious tabloid lies” and quotes alleged sexual predator Clarence Thomas to call himself the victim of a “high-tech lynching.” I admittedly had a little chuckle when Robinson insisted that “those are not the words of Mark Robinson” and that his supporters know his voice, seeing as CNN quite literally identified him as “minisoldr” through his own catchphrases and penchant for white supremacy.
As for the rest of the Republican Party, while the Carolina Journal reported that the Trump campaign is cutting Robinson off, citing the cancelation of two scheduled appearances for Robinson alongside JD Vance on Thursday, Politico reported that Trump’s team denies this. Other Republican leaders have stayed relatively silent, though, quite conspicuously, one GOP megadonor in North Carolina deleted a previous social media post in support of Robinson. Meanwhile, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) told reporters the details in CNN’s report were concerning, but also attempted to give Robinson an out: “Given the degree of electronic manipulation that can happen these days with AI, with everything else, who the hell knows what’s true and what’s not.” Of course, the extensive, alleged comments from Robinson long predate AI, so, there’s that!
Cable news pundits are attributing this story, which would frankly be a hell of an oppo dump, to North Carolina Democrats like Democratic gubernatorial Josh Stein and his campaign. But personally, I have a little conspiracy theory of my own. The deadline for candidates to drop is September 19 at 11:59 p.m., and should they drop, state party leaders would choose their replacement. Robinson is a uniquely weak candidate, given his long history of controversies (I’ll get into all of that next!), and he’s substantially trailing Stein despite how Trump leads Harris in most polls. If I’m the North Carolina GOP, I certainly have more motive to run Robinson out of the race by EOD Thursday than Stein does.
Robinson’s past controversies, explained
I first wrote about Robinson when he won his primary in March, and frankly, all of his past controversies just make every single alleged porn forum comment from him that much more believable—and, in some cases, ironic. Case in point: In 2022, HuffPost reported that Robinson once said that instead of birth control, young people need to “get this under control,” waving at his crotch. In 2019, he slut-shamed abortion patients, who, again, include his wife: “Abortion in this country is not about protecting the lives of mothers. It’s about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.” Robinson has been open about his wife’s abortion years ago, but this openness has only been used to bolster and further justify his extreme anti-abortion position.
At other points, Robinson has openly referred to established facts about the Holocaust as “hogwash.” In one 2017 post, Robinson wrote, “There is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered. There is also a REASON those same liberals DO NOT FILL the airwaves with programs about the Communist and the 100+ million PEOPLE they murdered throughout the 20th century.” By writing “6 million Jews” in quotation marks, Robinson makes it clear he doesn’t believe that figure.
He’s referred to LGBTQ people as “maggots,” adamantly defended sexual predators and abusers like Roy Moore and OJ Simpson, called the children who survived the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, “spoiled little bastards” and “media prosti-tots,” and… all of this is just the tip of the iceberg.
So, naturally, many social media users eagerly anticipated CNN’s bombshell report, and in terms of salaciousness, it didn’t disappoint—nor did the barrage of subsequent memes:
As of early Friday, Stein, who led Robinson by as many as 14 points even before the report, has yet to comment on any of its details, instead writing in a statement that “North Carolinians already know Mark Robinson is completely unfit to be Governor.” And by Thursday afternoon—for whatever reason!—the political forecasting site Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball shifted the North Carolina gubernatorial race from “lean Democrat” to “likely Democrat.” I wonder why!
