About a month ago, as North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson was mired in scandal and losing GOP support, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether he’d pull his endorsement from his party’s gubernatorial nominee in the Tar Heel State.

“Uh, I don’t know the situation,” the former president replied.

Last week, while campaigning in North Carolina, Trump was asked again about whether he continued to support Robinson’s statewide candidacy. “I’m not familiar with the race,” he said. “I haven’t seen it.”

The answers were unsatisfying, but they were at least rational. Trump is certainly a highly provocative and unpopular figure in his own right, but Robinson has become politically radioactive. It didn’t surprise anyone to see the former president — who’d previously championed the lieutenant governor’s bid — keep the gubernatorial hopeful at arm’s length.

What was surprising was when Trump’s running mate, just days later, did the opposite.

Campaigning in North Carolina, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance — unprompted — said at an event, “I want to give a shoutout to — you guys have a great lieutenant governor.”

A moment later, looking down at his notes, the Ohio senator added, “Sorry, um, we got — sorry. Mark isn’t here.”

That was, to be sure, a rather awkward moment, with Vance apparently expecting Robinson to be on hand for the event, only to learn otherwise in real time. But putting the clumsiness aside, there was a larger question hanging overhead:

Since when does the Trump campaign tout Robinson as “a great lieutenant governor”?

We are, after all, talking about a right-wing candidate who reportedly posted to a porn forum, described himself as a “Nazi,” argued that slavery wasn’t necessarily a “bad” thing and had positive things to say about Adolf Hitler’s book, among other things.

While the GOP candidate has said the reporting is wrong, Blue Light News also reported that user data showed “that the person using the ‘Nude Africa’ account that reportedly belonged to Robinson had accessed the porn website from a location not far from Robinson’s home.”

A great many Republicans have found the meticulously reported allegations credible. Indeed, much of Robinson’s campaign staff — who were apparently unbothered by all of the earlier revelations about the radical candidate — resigned en masse last month.

They weren’t the only ones who jumped ship. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, the senior senator from Robinson’s home state, indicated that he’s not going to vote for his party’s gubernatorial nominee. Around the same time, two Republican governors — Georgia’s Brian Kemp and Tennessee’s Bill Lee — withdrew their Robinson endorsements.

So, why is it exactly, that Vance still thinks he’s “great,” even as his running mate avoids saying Robinson’s name out loud?

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”