Politics
Harris, DNC scramble to tie Trump to North Carolina’s Mark Robinson
By every available metric, Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson was already losing North Carolina’s gubernatorial race. The question was less about whether he’d fail and more about the margin of his upcoming defeat.
But the latest revelations about the extremist candidate have generated an entirely different set of questions — such as whether Robinson’s campaign will be able to continue.
That’s what tends to happen when BLN appears to uncover evidence of a gubernatorial candidate publishing to a porn website’s message board, describing himself as a “black NAZI,” who doesn’t think slavery was necessarily a “bad” thingand who enjoys transgender pornography. (Robinson has denied the accuracy of the reporting.)
The day after BLN’s report reached the public, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign took advantage of the opportunity. The New York Times reported:
The Harris campaign released a new television advertisement in North Carolina that seeks to tie former President Donald J. Trump to Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is facing pressure to drop out of the race for governor after BLN reported on offensive posts it says he made on an adult online forum. The ad juxtaposes footage of Trump paying tribute to Robinson alongside the lieutenant governor condemning women who have had abortions for not being “responsible enough to keep your skirt down.” The ad’s narrator concludes: “Donald Trump and Mark Robinson: They’re both wrong for North Carolina.”
It’s an ad North Carolinians should probably expect to see quite a bit in the coming days.
What’s more, it’s not just Team Harris. Less than a day after the right-wing candidate confronted yet another round of brutal headlines, the Democratic National Committee also unveiled new advertisements — including billboards — linking Robinson to Trump.
The point, as an NBC News report explained, is not subtle: Democrats don’t just want to remind North Carolina’s electorate about Robinson’s scandals, they also want to tie the former president to Robinson’s sinking ship. There are different paths to the White House this year, but nearly everyone can agree that if the Republican ticket falls short in the Tar Heel State, Donald Trump will not return to power next year.
Even JD Vance conceded on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this past weekend, “It’s very hard for us to win unless we’re able to get North Carolina.”
It’s among the reasons why Democrats were so glad to see Robinson’s latest scandal: The more North Carolinians turn out to support state Attorney General Josh Stein’s gubernatorial campaign this year, the better Harris’ odds of winning the state, too.
At least, that’s the theory. Recent history tells us that North Carolinians have been willing to split their ballots, voting for a gubernatorial candidate from one party, while supporting a presidential candidate from the other party, at the same time. It happened in 2016 and 2020for example, and it could certainly happen again in 2024.
But as Robinson flails, it’s not surprising that Democrats would want to take full advantage of the opportunity.
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.”
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to restore the government-run Voice of America’s operations after it had effectively been shut down a year ago, putting hundreds of employees who have been on administrative leave back to work.
U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth gave the U.S. Agency for Global Media a week to put together a plan for putting Voice of America on the air. It has been operating with a skeleton staff since President Donald Trump issued an executive order to shut it down.
A week ago, Lamberth said Kari Lake, who had been Trump’s choice to lead the agency, did not have the legal authority to do what she had done at Voice of America. In Tuesday’s decision, Lamberth ruled on the actions she had taken to respond to Trump’s order, essentially shelving 1,042 of VOA’s 1,147 employees.
“Defendants have provided nothing approaching a principled basis for their decision,” Lamberth wrote.
There was no immediate comment on the decision by the agency overseeing Voice of America. Lake had denounced Lamberth’s March 7 ruling, saying it would be appealed. Since then, Trump nominated Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, to run USAGM. That requires Senate approval, a step that was not taken with Lake.
Patsy Widakuswara, Voice of America’s White House bureau chief and a plaintiff in the lawsuit to restore it, said she is deeply grateful for the decision.
“We are eager to begin repairing the damage Kari Lake has inflicted on our agency and our colleagues, to return to our congressional mandate, and to rebuild the trust of the global audience we have been unable to serve for the past year,” she said.
“We know the road to restoring VOA’s operations and reputation will be long and difficult,” she said. “We hope the American people will continue to support our mission to produce journalism, not propaganda.”
Voice of America has transmitted news coverage to countries around the world since its formation in World War II, often in countries with no tradition of a free press. Before Trump’s executive order, VOA had operated in 49 different languages, broadcasting to 362 million people.
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump administration to restore the government-run Voice of America’s operations after it had effectively been shut down a year ago, putting hundreds of employees who have been on administrative leave back to work.
U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth gave the U.S. Agency for Global Media a week to put together a plan for putting Voice of America on the air. It has been operating with a skeleton staff since President Donald Trump issued an executive order to shut it down.
A week ago, Lamberth said Kari Lake, who had been Trump’s choice to lead the agency, did not have the legal authority to do what she had done at Voice of America. In Tuesday’s decision, Lamberth ruled on the actions she had taken to respond to Trump’s order, essentially shelving 1,042 of VOA’s 1,147 employees.
“Defendants have provided nothing approaching a principled basis for their decision,” Lamberth wrote.
There was no immediate comment on the decision by the agency overseeing Voice of America. Lake had denounced Lamberth’s March 7 ruling, saying it would be appealed. Since then, Trump nominated Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, to run USAGM. That requires Senate approval, a step that was not taken with Lake.
Patsy Widakuswara, Voice of America’s White House bureau chief and a plaintiff in the lawsuit to restore it, said she is deeply grateful for the decision.
“We are eager to begin repairing the damage Kari Lake has inflicted on our agency and our colleagues, to return to our congressional mandate, and to rebuild the trust of the global audience we have been unable to serve for the past year,” she said.
“We know the road to restoring VOA’s operations and reputation will be long and difficult,” she said. “We hope the American people will continue to support our mission to produce journalism, not propaganda.”
Voice of America has transmitted news coverage to countries around the world since its formation in World War II, often in countries with no tradition of a free press. Before Trump’s executive order, VOA had operated in 49 different languages, broadcasting to 362 million people.
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