Christian Nationalist Mark Robinson finally admits sex shop stories were true
The defeated North Carolina GOP candidate says he had to lie to help Trump win, a stunning admission after years of denial
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Two years ago, journalists at The Assembly uncovered that Mark Robinson, the right-wing conservative Christian extremist who was running as the Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, was a huge fan of adult sex shops. Robinson’s campaign said at the time the allegations were “bullshit.”
A couple of weeks after that, a separate CNN report found that all that was just the tip of the iceberg. Robinson also made comments online, under an alias, on an adult website called “Nude Africa,” in which he said “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves” and “I’m a black NAZI!” He said Martin Luther King Jr. was “worse than a maggot.” He used a variety of racial slurs. His campaign denied everything, and Robinson insisted “We are not getting out of this race. There are people who are counting on us to win this race.”
And then, in an election where Republicans swept control of the federal government, he lost the gubernatorial race by a lot. The stories sunk his candidacy. He was too toxic even for Donald Trump.
(Robinson sued CNN for defamation for $50 million. He withdrew his lawsuit a few months later.)
Robinson has been relatively quiet ever since his election loss, but he just reemerged on a right-wing podcast run by his former campaign manager. Among his many admissions? The allegations about his porn addiction had some truth to it.
Before getting into what he’s saying now, let me remind you of how damning the allegations were a couple of years ago.
Robinson wrote in his 2022 memoir that he found Jesus in the late 1980s. Yet, in the 1990s and early 2000s, when he was far more obscure, The Assembly found that he spent his free time frequenting sex shops to the point that he was a regular customer.
[Employee Louis] Money, 52, told The Assembly that Robinson came in as often as five nights a week to watch porn videos in a private booth.
Five other men who said they were former employees or customers during this period also told The Assembly that Robinson visited two of these stores: Gents Video & News and I-40 Video & News.
In addition, Money said Robinson purchased “hundreds” of bootleg porn videos that Money sold on the side.
“He was good for at least one a week,” Money said. But Money said Robinson didn’t pay for the last one, which he described as a compilation of “super hardcore” films he acquired in New York City that were too risqué to be sold in North Carolina.
Five nights a week?! Hundreds of videos? Maybe the most amazing thing about that is how Robinson had that much free time.
His campaign denied everything, though they acknowledged that the two men knew each other. Just not for reasons that involved seedy sex shops. Money’s recollections of Robinson, however, were very specific: “I know he might have problems with gay people, but I don’t think he has problems with lesbians.”
And even if Money made everything up, the denial didn’t account for all the other employees who also had very specific (and sometimes fond!) memories of Robinson’s visits to their stores.
At first glance, this shouldn’t have been a big story because a man’s private life shouldn’t be a concern for anyone, especially when it’s legal and consensual, as this was. But Robinson wasn’t just some random dude. He had built his entire political brand on promoting Christian extremism. He painted himself as a Christian savior the state needed. He treated LGBTQ people as sexual deviants. He used the word “pornography” to describe what public school teachers were supposedly teaching children.
Mark Robinson made faith the center of his political persona, a move that helped him become the Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina from 2021 to 2025.
He was the sort of person who said in recent years that forced religion in public schools could prevent mass shootings, that transgenderism and homosexuality amounted to filth, that the trans movement was demonic and full of Antichrist spirit, and that straight couples were superior to gay ones. At one rally, he ranted “Some folks need killing.”
He also denied the Holocaust, saying that the accepted understanding of what happened during World War II amounted to “foolishness.”
He was also an anti-abortion nutcase. He saied in a 2021 speech that once a woman is pregnant, it’s not [her] body anymore. His campaign website once made clear that, “As a Christian, Mark will honor the sanctity of life.” But that, too, was hypocritical since we learned Robinson paid for an abortion in 1989—after he had supposedly found Jesus. (His wife was no angel either; she screwed the state out of money and also stiffed the Girl Scouts.) Lying in the name of Jesus was a family business, apparently…
That’s the backdrop to this why new podcast interview is so revealing.
“I watched pornography and was involved with people that watched pornography and that was absolutely true,” Robinson told Real Truth News, a conservative “news” venture his former campaign manager, Matt Hurley, established earlier this year.
…
In the conversation that aired Thursday, Robinson said he is “deeply flawed” but not “a monster.” “I gave enough molehills for them to make mountains out of. That’s the thing I’m most disappointed about,” he said.
…
Asked why he lied during the campaign, Robinson said disputing the stories was necessary to help President Donald Trump carry North Carolina. (Trump won the state, while Robinson suffered the biggest gubernatorial defeat in the state since 1980.)
“I won’t say that I completely lied. Some of the things about the whole story, some of it there’s some truth to it,” he said. “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.”
He added, “I’d make the exact same decision. I’d fight the exact same way.”
His only regret, he said, was not replacing his campaign team in the moment.
Robinson didn’t address the heinous comments reported by CNN.
But the revelation here still says a lot about his character. Robinson was marketing himself as a Christian hero even as he was living a life inconsistent with the “values” he wanted to force on everyone else. When confronted about it, he lied some more and attacked the reporters. And even now, he’s not fully atoning for any of it. And he’s sidestepping the most damning allegations.
The Charlotte Observer notes that all of this must be a recent epiphany because, “just eight months ago, Robinson appeared on a different podcast and denied CNN’s report, calling it ‘fake news.’”
That’s the Christian hypocrisy we’ve come to know so well.
It’s telling that he says he needed to lie to protect Trump’s campaign—he said “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”—because that’s what everyone on the right has been during before and during his presidency. The Christians surrounding Trump have always been perfectly willing to throw their religious beliefs out the door in exchange for political power and access.
That’s why North Carolinians were right to reject Robinson, and it’s why Republicans should have done the same with Trump. Because none of these people have any actual principles. They just know what to say to convince the most gullible Christians in the country that they’re part of the same tribe, even though their public actions always contradict it.
I’ve said this before, but the irony in all of this is that Robinson’s life represents the future that progressives are fighting for—one where reproductive freedom and sexual choices are private matters. Robinson climbed the political ladder in large part because no one cared about his sexual interests and because the abortion he paid for allowed him to pursue the life he wanted. But the only way he could become governor was by telling Christian audiences that the things he did during his entire adult life were evil and disqualifying… for everyone else, anyway.
No one expects a politician to be perfect. But Robinson is proof that, in the Republican Party, the truth never matters. As long as you deny, deny, deny—and attack the people who point out what you did—the most ignorant conservative voters will always treat you like a king.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
Isn't bearing false witness like a huge sin? The fact that this dude still says he would lie all over again and deceive people around him is insane. He still hasn't learned anything. All around just a terrible human being.
People like Robinson amaze me for their fear of the "S" and the "P" word. Sex to evangelicals is bad enough, but mixed with porn, it's like a third rail – no one wants to admit to touching it. The problem is that, more than likely, ALL OF THEM 𝗛𝗔𝗩𝗘.
And after all his protestations to the contrary, that Robinson did finally come forward frankly doesn't do much to redeem him.