Trump Ignores Furor Over Mark Robinson at North Carolina Rally
(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump delivered a speech attacking rival Kamala Harris and detailing his campaign pledges during a visit to North Carolina, while avoiding mention of the state’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson and the firestorm surrounding his candidacy.
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Trump held a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Saturday, two days after CNN reported that Robinson — whose candidacy the former president has endorsed — posted sexually explicit and derogatory content on an adult website, including describing himself as a “Black Nazi,” condoning slavery, using antisemitic language and discussing watching young women shower.
While several prominent state Republican Party officials attended, Robinson wasn’t seen at the rally. He has denied the allegations, calling them “salacious tabloid lies” in a video, and vowed to stay in the race.
The controversy threatens to undercut Republicans in a battleground state where they’re already on the defensive after the vice president’s entry into the race stoked Democrats’ hopes of flipping the state in the November presidential election.
Harris’ campaign on Friday launched a new ad seeking to tie Trump to Robinson that spotlights past comments from the former president praising the candidate, including referring to him as “better than Martin Luther King.” Robinson’s posts also included language belittling the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., according to CNN.
In a memo on Saturday, Harris campaign officials said Robinson’s alleged remarks would bolster their efforts to reach out to suburban and Black voters and moderate Republicans.
“This campaign will continue to highlight Trump and Robinson’s mutual support and their shared extreme agenda and rhetoric that is toxic to voters. Trump made Mark Robinson, and he will have to answer for him,” according to the memo.
Earlier: North Carolina Governor Says Robinson Furor Could Benefit Harris
A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll from late August found Harris had overtaken Trump in the state by a margin of 49% to 47%. Both campaigns are targeting the state, which awards 16 Electoral College votes. Trump carried North Carolina in both of his prior White House runs, though he only narrowly beat Biden there in 2020.
Trump’s rally was held outdoors, less than a week after he was targeted in a second assassination attempt that was foiled by Secret Service agents at the former president’s West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course, capping another tumultuous week in the presidential race.
Economic Pitch
Saturday’s rally had been billed by Trump’s campaign as an address on jobs, inflation and the economy in a campaign that will hinge largely on which candidate voters trust to better handle those issues.
Trump and Harris have offered voters competing economic agendas that are heavy on tax benefits, cuts and other measures aimed at easing the high prices and costs — for goods and services and housing — that have soured perceptions of the economy and left US households reeling.
Key to both campaigns’ messaging has been courting suburban women and independents. Trump sought to sharpen that pitch on Saturday, saying that “women are poorer than they were four years ago” and were “paying much higher prices for groceries and everything else than they were four years ago.”
Both Trump and Harris have also sought political momentum from this week’s Federal Reserve decision to lower its benchmark interest rate by a half percentage point.
Trump stopped short of citing the Fed on Saturday, while claiming that “inflation is now getting stabilized, because the country is doing badly.”
Trump also mentioned one of his most prominent supporters, billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of SpaceX, saying he would enlist him in one of the former president’s longtime goals — putting humans on Mars, a target he floated during his first term.
“I’ll talk to Elon,” Trump said. “Elon get those rocket ships going, because we want to reach Mars before the end of my term.”
--With assistance from Jennifer Epstein.
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