Epically scandal-plagued former North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has shown us a blueprint for an apology tour in the MAGA influencer era. It apparently involves visiting a very friendly podcast, admitting you lied, not really apologizing for it, and monetizing the whole thing.
You may remember Robinson from the series of wildly controversial statements he posted on his Facebook page, made while in office, and continued to make on the campaign trail during his ill-fated gubernatorial bid in 2024. Those comments included attacks on Jewish, Black, gay, and transgender people as well as hints of Holocaust denial and ranting about the “New World Order.” None of that stopped Republican voters and party leaders — including President Donald Trump — from embracing Robinson. During his run for governor, Robinson was outed as a regular in adult video shops and on pornography forums where he also made a series of wild posts, including, infamously, declaring to his fellow porn enthusiasts that he was a “black NAZI!” That was, finally, a bridge too far.
As the revelations cascaded, Republicans — reportedly including operatives from Trump’s re-election campaign — pressured Robinson to abandon his campaign. However, Robinson stayed in the race, fixated on the porn-forum story, which he dismissed as a lie. He even filed a $50 million defamation suit against CNN for what he called, in an apparent homage to Clarence Thomas, “a high-tech lynching.” The lawsuit was ultimately dropped.
And now, well over a year later, Robinson is admitting he was actually the one who lied. That acknowledgement came on a podcast linked to a Florida church where Robinson, who called the president one of his “good friends,” said he refused to come clean in order to shield Trump.
“The most expedient thing to do for the people around me was to continue to fight, and if I had to ignore the truth at that moment for their expediency, I felt like it was the right thing to do,” Robinson said. “We can deal with this on the back end, but I certainly don’t want to be the person that costs the president of the United States the election. Didn’t want to cost anyone else their election.”
Robinson, who did not respond to a request for comment on this story, also said he didn’t regret that lying. In fact, he claimed he would do the same thing over again if given the chance for a do-over.
“I’d make the exact same decision,” said Robinson. “I’d fight in the exact same way.”
The various Robinson scandals were notable for their sheer volume and weirdness. Two months before Election Day, a local news outlet, The Assembly, published allegations that, well after embracing Christianity, Robinson visited x-rated video shops “as often as five nights a week to watch porn videos in a private booth.” Two weeks later, CNN released the piece revealing that Robinson was a frequent poster on an online porn forum called Nude Africa where, among many other things, he talked about watching women shower, offered the “black NAZI!” self-description, and discussed his enjoyment of transgender adult videos, which was a stark contrast from his anti-gay conservative brand. Subsequent stories outed Robinson as a participant on Ashley Madison, a site for people seeking extramarital affairs.
The podcast interview — and Robinson’s big admission — was heavily hyped. Two days before it debuted on March 19, Robinson returned to Instagram for the first time in over a year with a post that teased the show with the tagline “it’s time to be honest.” Despite that promise, the actual interview was far from a complete reckoning.
Though Robinson’s entire career was essentially a slow-rolling scandal, and though his ultimate demise involved not just one but a series of news stories, in the interview he merely addressed his “obsession with pornography” rather than covering the many bizarre behaviors and comments that were included in his porn forum postings or elsewhere in his online presence. And, even during his supposed moment of contrition and humility, Robinson also claimed — without any evidence or specifics — that his attempts to dismiss all of the allegations against him weren’t entirely dishonest.
“I won’t say that I completely lied,” Robinson declared.
And, while Robinson repeatedly suggested he had always intended to reveal the truth after his race, as the News & Observer newspaper has pointed out, he continued to dismiss the CNN story as a fabrication as recently as eight months ago.
Robinson’s new moment of (partial) truth also came with a bit of mythmaking. He burst onto the political scene in 2018 after he gave a pro-gun speech at a city council meeting. Prior to that, Robinson was an unknown who operated a home day care with his wife. However, in his podcast retelling, Robinson — who reeled off his controversial takes and even had a pro wrestling alter ego that he adopted for personal friends on Facebook — was a “social media influencer.” Robinson suggested that, even while visiting porn shops and lewd internet forums, he always had fame in mind.
“I’m thinking to myself while I’m doing these wrong things, what’s going to happen to you if you ever become famous?” he said on the podcast.
Robinson may not have been a famous influencer then, but he is trying to be one now. The semi-apology podcast was part of a return to social media for Robinson. Like all hardcore right-wing posters, he is back on Facebook firing off hot takes about, among other things, Muslims, slavery, and the transgender community. However, Robinson’s posts now come with a new feature. He’s charging $0.99 a month to allow people to subscribe to his Facebook page.
Like George Santos before him, it would seem Robinson is the latest Trump-era GOP figure to try to turn scandal into cash on social media. In the current environment, everyone in politics wants to be an influencer — and even the most embarrassing MAGA moments are money-making opportunities.
“Fully decarbonized power sector” is not a term commonly used in US media, but Sweden has achieved that with nuclear, wind and hydro and some solar and low-enthalpy ground heating. The country has even decarbonized steel production. Finland is also up there, with a high degree of electrification of its economy. Now we see countries such as the UK caught on the back foot due to their ongoing reliance on fossil fuels, particularly gas. Trump continues to talk about US hydrocarbon dominance, but it highlights how badly the US has missed the boat. In Norway, 96% of new car registrations were full electrics. US, 8%. Rubio and Vance are kind of amusing when they attack Europe as it is hard for the Europeans to understand what they are talking about (and probably most Americans with backgrounds in science and technology).