Uh oh, spagetti-o’s. This is not a good sign. Especially not 43 days before an election. Mark Robinson may have the sanction of the local North Carolina GOP, and he may have J.D. Vance playing with double-negatives (“I don’t not believe him,”) but at the end of the day if the people who are entrusted with getting you elected have decided collectively that they don’t want to get you elected, that is a statement that no politician wants to see made.

This is the equivalent of Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles walking out on Trump and taking Lara with them. Robinson’s campaign manager and deputy campaign manager have bailed and the finance director has bailed. That is catastrophic. The only way it’s not catastrophic is if every single ad buy and campaign maneuver has already been made and paid for. But even in that unlikely eventuality, the optics of this are not good. That is understatement.

This begs a couple of interesting questions:

  1. Will J.D. Vance still attempt to pretend the Robinson debacle doesn’t exist? Or if it does, that it’s a media fabrication?
  2. Can Trump survive this in North Carolina? Trump and Robinson are tied to one another and don’t be surprised if yet another (or several more) videos come out showing that cozy relationship.

This is getting a lot like Trump’s denial of knowing Lev Parnas when he did and Parnas proved it over and over again, unequivocally. Mark Robinson is Trump’s man, his “Martin Luther King on steroids,” his “fine wine,” the fellow he has “come to know so well.” How to walk that back in 43 days?

It says a lot that the campaign staff left. They see the handwriting on the wall and they don’t want to be tied to this loser. They don’t believe he can win. If they DID believe he would win, I believe they would have stayed with him, because that’s the essence of what being a campaign staffer is. You run a winning campaign and when the candidate wins, you get your reward.

The rewards may vary. They may be a chief of staff position or the like in the candidate’s new administration or a job on other successful campaigns, there are all kinds of possibiiities.

But clearly, the staffers had a meeting and they decided that getting away from Mark Robinson was their best course of action. Do not be surprised if the voters of North Carolina decide to do exactly the same thing.

Lindsey Graham was playing janitor again on the Sunday shows and he tried to mop up this mess. He said that if the allegations were true, “Then Robinson was unfit for office,” and should step down, or if the allegations were not true, “hire the best lawyer and sue CNN.” Whatever Graham really thinks is going on, it’s pretty clear what the Robinson campaign staffers think.

This is a real mess. I wonder how Trump is handling it down at Mar-a-Lago? Oh, is that what that sound of smashing glass in the distance is? Never mind.

 

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10 COMMENTS

  1. The bottom line is if he didn’t make the posts, how did he get them deleted in a day???

    I challenge anyone to pick an account out there that is not yours, and try to get the posts deleted. It won’t happen in a day, a week, a year. Never.

    16
    • Not to mention, Robinson’s gone so far as to claim the offending material was the product of “AI” which makes deleting them even more interesting (you’d think he’d have kept them available for the digital detectives to trace them back to the folks who created them or had them created–people seem to think that AI just creates itself but there has to be *someone* working to set up the initial parameters).

      12
      • Some of the posts dated back to 2008, years before AI was a thing. So unless someone went for a ride in the Tardis, those posts were genuine.

  2. No surprise so many of his campaign staff bailed on him. Who wants that kind of sh*t following them around on their resume? If they are extremely lucky, the next job they get will not do a thorough background check. Hell, even a half-ass background check would easily reveal their past participation in this fool’s campaign. Jumping ship would be the only thing that could save them: “when I found out what a piece of sh*t he was, I could no longer work for him”. I question why anyone would work for him in the first place since a great deal of really crappy sh*t is connected to him and was a known factor a while back.

  3. To Robinson’s resigners!! BFD!! You got out of this monster’s lair because he is gonna lose!! That does not show integrity!! You are no different than he is!! You have run this campaign, knowing exactly what a disgusting, nasty, evil POS he is and you wanted to subject the women and children and gays and transgenders and Jews and Muslims and everybody else in N. Carolina to that!! You probably think you are Christians, don’t you?! Well, not by my definition! You laid down with that filthy jackal and you are as dirty as he is!!

    14
  4. If Trump loses NC an awful lot of GOPers will blame it on Robinson – with Trump leading the chorus. He’ll claim he barely knew Robinson who will be relegated to “I think he might have been a coffee boy” status. NC has been close since 2020, Never more than 3-4 points and in three of the last four Presidential cycles it’s been a one-percent race. Biden would have made it close and Harris has a real shot. The thing is, Robison could damage more than Trump. The GOP power structure has stood by him in part because his team assured them Robinson was in better shape than he was. Fudging internal polling perhaps? Anyway despite Independents being the larges voting bloc and Democrats and Republicans fairly even split for a long time this state is one of the, if not THE most viciously gerrymandered in the country. When one turncoat Democrat down in Mecklenberg county (Charlotte area) switched over to the GOP (she’ll be gone after her next election) it again gave the GOP a super majority. There’s not a chance in hell of Democrats gaining control of either chamber in Raleigh BUT Robinson could cost them their super majorities in BOTH.

    Thom Tillis who I can’t stand tried to warn the state GOP but they just wouldn’t listen and fell in line behind Robinson. That could cost them bigly. As for those who’ve just bailed on him if I’m right and not only does Trump lose but they also see their super majority busted those operatives will I think find it more difficult than you think finding work in the future. Had they made this move long enough back to give the GOP a viable shot at putting up a replacement Trump and they wouldn’t be in this mess. I’m thinking they propped up Robinson for too long and will pay a career price for having done so.

    • Robinson endorsed the Republican candidate to replace him as Lt Gov so I hope the connection sinks his race too. He’s been described as “Robinson lite” so he’d be just as much of a nuisance to Josh Stein as Robinson was to Roy Cooper.
      The democrat for Lt Gov is a state senator so hopefully she’ll trounce Weatherman.

  5. I await Trumpler’s first racist salvoes against Robinson. Something along the lines of “Well you know we just can’t trust those folks…”

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