Politics
The Trump campaign does not want to talk about Mark Robinson
As the fallout continues over a BLN report about North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson’s past inflammatory comments on a porn website, his most prominent GOP champion, Donald Trumphas remained conspicuously silent on the matter.
CNN’s bombshell reporting on Thursday has shaken Robinson’s fellow Republicans and further threatens to sink his flagging bid for governor. But it seems the Trump campaign may be employing a “wait and see” approach to the scandal. In the wake of the report, the campaign issued a statement about the importance of winning the state in November, but it did not touch on the salacious details or mention Robinson.
According to BLN, Robinson left comments on a porn website’s message board between 2008 and 2012 in which he referred to himself as a “black NAZI,” called for the return of slavery and recalled “peeping” on women in gym showers as a teenager, among other details. Robinson himself has said that the posts are not his and suggested that they were fake. He has vowed not to drop out of the race.
Although The Associated Press reported that Robinson will no longer appear with Trump at his rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Saturday, the campaign has not disavowed Robinson. Brian Hughes, a senior Trump campaign adviser, denied reports that the campaign has been pressuring Robinson to leave the race, and Trump’s campaign press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told NBC News that Trump is not considering pulling his endorsement of the beleaguered gubernatorial candidate.
Trump’s running mate has also refused to address the controversy. On Friday, in response to a video showing Sen. JD Vance walking past a reporter who asks about Robinson, Vance wrote on X: “My comment on Mark Robinson is that Kamala Harris cast the deciding vote on the Inflation Explosion Act and because of that a lot of Americans can’t afford groceries.”
It may be difficult for Trump to repudiate Robinson now, given the praise he has lavished on the gubernatorial candidate in the past. Despite Robinson’s history of anti-trans, anti-gay, anti-abortion and antisemitic rhetoricTrump has spoken highly of Robinson, endorsing him as “better than Martin Luther King [Jr.]” and calling him an “outstanding person.”
“I’ve gotten to know him so well,” Trump said of Robinson in December.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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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