A video of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz seemingly blasting North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson‘s alleged Nazi comments gained traction on social media Saturday.
Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign for the Tar Heel State was rocked by a CNN report on Thursday alleging that Robinson made racist and sexist posts on a pornography site over a decade ago. The lieutenant governor has repeatedly denied writing the posts and has said he’ll stay in the race, telling CNN that the alleged posts are “salacious tabloid lies.”
CNN reported that from 2008 to 2012, Robinson, whose gubernatorial bid is backed by former President and GOP nominee Donald Trump, allegedly made a series of inflammatory comments on a message board of the pornography site Nude Africa, which included calling himself a “black NAZI.”
The CNN report appears to link him to posts made under the username “minisoldr.” On Friday, The Washington Post reported that “minisoldr” also praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf.
“Mein Kampf is a good read,” the Nude Africa user reportedly wrote in a thread on book recommendations. “It’s very informative and not at all what I thought it would be. It’s a real eye opener.”
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz at a campaign rally at the Highmark Amphitheater on September 5 in Erie, Pennsylvania. A video of Walz seemingly blasting North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson’s alleged Nazi comments gained traction on social media Saturday.
Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
In an apparent dig at Robinson, Walz, who is Vice President Kamala Harris‘ running mate on the Democratic ticket, explained during a campaign stop on Saturday the role that Minnesota and Pennsylvania had in defeating Nazi Germany in the 1940s, but claimed to the people of Allentown, Pennsylvania, that neo-Nazism exists in the Republican Party.
“That iron from the northern Minnesota iron range fueled the steel mills here right in the Lehigh Valley. Together, it was our people that built the tanks that won World War II and freed the world from Nazi oppression,” Walz told the crowd. “I don’t know if you noticed Nazi tyranny, we got folks running as Republicans for governor that are proud to refer to themselves as Nazis. Let’s not pretend that there’s a gradual difference between the folks that are running here.”
Newsweek has reached out to the Harris-Walz campaign and Robinson’s campaign via email for comment late Saturday afternoon.
A video of Walz’s comments posted to X, formerly Twitter, has received 590,400 views since it was posted by a senior digital editor for MeidasTouch, a liberal news network, who goes by the name Acyn shortly before 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday afternoon.
Rick Wilson, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump super PAC, shared the video and wrote on X, “He WENT THERE. And I’m here for it. As I like to say, if the jackboot fits…”
Fred Wellman, host of the On Democracy podcast on MeidasTouch, simply wrote in response to the video: “Facts.”
Meanwhile, Robinson’s campaign communications director Mike Lonergan blamed the reported posts on Josh Stein, Robinson’s Democratic opponent, in a statement emailed to Newsweek on Friday.
“Everything Josh Stein [and] the Democrats say about Mark Robinson is either an outright lie or twisted so far out of context it might as well be,” Lonergan said. “The people of North Carolina have had enough lies from career politicians like Josh Stein—and that’s why they’ll elect Mark Robinson governor on November 5.”
