Transcript of GOP strategist on Robinson campaign shakeup: 'Not a huge surprise'

Multiple staffers have just quit the campaign for Mark Robinson. He's the embattled Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina. The campaign telling CNN tonight four of its top operatives have stepped down from their roles. Those exits coming just days after a bombshell CNN report uncovered racist, sexually graphic, and lewd comments made by Robinson on a porn website years ago. Robinson, writing in a statement tonight, I appreciate the efforts of these team members who have made the difficult choice to step away from the campaign, and I wish them well in their future endeavors. I look forward to announcing new staff roles in the coming days. Cnn K-File senior editor Andrew Kuzinski, who broke this story, joins us now with more details. Andrew, what are you hearing tonight?

Well, that's right. Cnn has learned that four top operatives, two lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson's campaign, have all resigned in the wake of our story, including the campaign manager, Deputy Campaign Manager,finance director and top consultant and senior advisor. This is leaving his campaign right now with essentially out a senior staff adding into the last month of the election. And now I think the question is, where does this campaign go from here? Are more staff going to resign? And this is just the latest fallout from that story that we published on Thursday.

Right. And when you talked to him, I know you interviewed him. He denied a lot of what you laid in front of him with a lot of evidence. But But did you get any indication at that time that there might be changes in his campaign, or is this a surprise to you?

Well, it's a surprise to us. We had actually heard rumors ahead of our interview with him because people might have seen that our story started to leak out before we even published it. Somebody on his campaign staff was leaking that somewhere. And we had heard rumors that some of his campaign staff had resigned. And I asked him directly in that interview, we've heard that staff on your campaign have resigned. And he said to in that interview, I believe that none of his campaign staff had resigned. So since then, I don't know if this happened before then, now we know that, in fact, all or many of his top operatives on his campaign have just all resigned in mass.

Yeah, we're talking about a senior advisor, the head of the campaign. It's a lot of senior staff members. Andrew, just for people who maybe don't remember all the details, didn't get to read the report, give us an outline of what you all found.

So we found that between 2008 and 2012, Mark Robinson commented on the forums of a pornographic website where he calls himself a, quote, Black Nazi. He said that he preferred Hitler to US leadership. One of the most disturbing comments we found was him saying that he supported reinstating slavery. Robinson has also run as a very harsh anti-transgender candidate for office. We found a comment in our story where he said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography. He's running as a socially conservative candidate, very anti-abortion. We found a comment where he said that he didn't care if a woman had an abortion. There was a lot of very sexually graphic stuff that we couldn't even publish in our story, and we also found a whole number of comments where he said he got sexual gratification from a memory of spying on women in public showers as a teenager. So just a whole lot of disturbing stuff there that we were able to trace to Robinson because he's used both the same username all across the web that he used on that forum, that his name was listed on that forum, a whole bunch of stuff that pointed to that user being Mark Robinson and Mark Robinson only.

Yeah, it is incredible reporting. And now we are seeing the real-world fallout here. Andrew Kuzinski, thank you so much for being with us, walking us through all of that. I want to bring in our panel now, CNN Political Commentator and Republican strategist, Sher Michael Singleton. Also joining us, Democratic strategist and founder of Lift Our Voices, Julie Rygensky. Thanks to both of you for being here with us. Sher Michael, I just want to get your thoughts first and foremost as a Republican, as someone who I know talks to the Trump campaign, North Carolina is going to be quite a tight race if these polls are correct. I was just talking to Doug High, who, of course, is a North Carolinian, also former communications director for the RNC. And I asked him about this theory of the case I had heard yesterday from someone else on one of our panels that maybe in other situations where there's a big blowout in a state, it may not matter, something like this to the presidential election. But when it's going to be one on the margins, most likely. Is this something that can move those margins just enough? And I'm curious what your thought is through that lens.

I mean, it's typically not the norm, but this is an unprecedented campaign to the premise of your question. It's certainly possible, But also, number two, Jessica, it forces the Trump campaign to spend dollars in a state that under the ordinary set of circumstances, you would expect a Republican to win. And those resources could be spent and utilized in Pennsylvania, which we all know is a must-win state, not only for the vice president, but also for the former president, if they're trying to get to that magic number of 270. With that said, I am not surprised that the senior staffers of Mark Robinson have resigned. I mean, this guy is a disgrace to conservatism. He is clearly not authentically conservative. The Republicans in North Carolina had an opportunity, and Jessica, I keep saying this on our airways for days now, to nominate and go with former congressman and pastor Mark Walker, someone who is a conservative who would have ran an incredibly competitive race and potentially could have even won. I don't know. But yet they decided to go with Robinson. And from my conversations with people in North Carolina, many people knew that this guy had a troubled background.

And yet they still risked not only the seat, but they also potentially risked the presidency by nominating this guy with a deplorable background. Now you run the risk of turning off Republican voters who may say, You know what? This is just too much chaos. I'm just going to sit this out. What are the implications for something like that for the top of the ticket? That being the former President Donald Trump. You also have to keep in mind the implications for the battle for the lower tier tickets, Congressional races, state Senate, state House seats. All of those things are going to, unfortunately, be impacted by this one man. And all he had to do was step down several days ago, and his arrogance and his ego made him decide not to.

Yeah. Julie, we've seen the Harris campaign already cut an ad tying the former President to Mark Robinson. Former President Trump had endorsed him, although when he was at the rally on Saturday, Trump did not say his name, and Mark Robinson was not there. Do you think that's going to be effective for the Harris campaign in persuading potentially new voters to come her way?

Of course it will, because, of course, Donald Trump has yet to criticize Robinson, even after all the horrible things that Andrew Kuzinski uncovered and all the horrible things that we knew about even before Andrew Kuzinski uncovered them. Look, let me just say this, because this is so reminiscent of what happened to the Trump orbit back in 2020. All of a sudden, Mark Robinson looks like he's not going to win. So his staff en masse decides they're going to resign, not And not because they're offended by what he said, because that's to be very clear, he has said incredibly offensive things before, as Schermichael pointed out, but because now it looks like they don't want a loss, they don't want a big L on their record. This is so similar to what happened in 2020, where Trump staff stayed with him and stayed with him and stayed with him after Charlottesville, after all of the comments that he made throughout his presidency. And only after he lost, January sixth, gave them the excuse to say, Oh, we distance ourselves from this guy. He's a bad guy. Well, listen, if you're with him, throughout the entire four years of his term when he was doing unconscionable things, trying to open fire and protesters.

I mean, the march down the White House after his loss, the holding up the Bible, if you were there for Charlottesville, and yet you stuck around. And after January sixth, when you knew that he wasn't going to get certified, you didn't want that loss on your record, suddenly you had some moral epiphany about him. Same thing happened here with Mark Robinson. This staff resigning today, I think, is a disgrace because they had no problem sticking with him when he said that the Holocaust was not a big deal, when he said that some people, quote unquote, need killing, talking about, I guess, his own constituents. To me, this is a little bit disingenuous, and it's so completely symptomatic of the illness going on in our politics right now. And I just don't know why more people don't talk about this.

And we are hearing from some Republicans who are just talking more generally about the situation there in North Carolina, about Mark Robinson as a candidate, about the impact he could potentially have We did hear from Senator Tom Cotton earlier today before this news broke. He was on the Sunday show. I think we have that clip we can play.

I've seen these allegations, Jake, and they're concerning allegations. He owes the people of North Carolina. The Shackles thing was under his name on his Facebook page. He owes the people of North Carolina more answers about it. But we're talking about the presidential race here that matters to everyone, not just the people in one state. Do you think that Trump should still support Mark Robinson in North Carolina? I'll leave that to President Trump, and most importantly, I'll leave it to the people of North Carolina. That is one state. We're talking about a presidential race that is going to affect every American at a time when a third of Americans can't even afford their groceries.

And again, that was Senator Tom Cotton with our Jake Tapper on State of the Union. Sure, Michael, I just want to get your reaction to what the Senator was saying there.

Yeah, look, no, I think he's right. I was looking at that recent MBC poll that came out today that everyone is talking about. And while it certainly is good news for Vice President Harris, because it does suggest that that the momentum we've seen is certainly moving in her direction, and it has provided her what, a 4 or 5 % boost ahead of the former President. But when you actually start looking beneath that top line numbers, there are a couple of areas where the former President does fairly well. Immigration has a 21, 22 % or point difference. You look at the cost of living, the economy. Donald Trump has an advantage. You look at crime. Donald Trump has an advantage. And one number that goes to Tom Cotton's point about people being concerned people being concerned just about the cost of living, the economy, maybe even their futures, 66 % said that they are afraid or worried about what the future looks like for them economically. So while the top numbers look great for Harris, if I'm on the Trump campaign, I'm trying to figure out how do I articulate a message to voters who are concerned about the issues that I just laid out, particularly in a state like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, those really crucial states that the former President absolutely must win if he wants to go back to the White House.