Mark Robinson was likely already on the fast track to loserdom, but having long ago outed himself as a black Nazi and a tranny sex aficionado probably hasn’t helped.

Nor has it helped that he belongs to a political class that Democrats, leftists, and Leftmedia types hate even more than they hate Donald Trump: black conservatives. Just ask Clarence Thomas.

Robinson is the sitting lieutenant governor of North Carolina, the first-ever black man elected to that position. And as the Republican Party’s 2024 gubernatorial candidate, he stands to become the Tar Heel State’s first-ever black governor. So he has a big ol’ target on his back. Thus, it’s no surprise that CNN would target Robinson with a hit piece that dredges up his apparent commentary on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago.

A few weeks ago, Kamala Harris was the least popular vice president in American history. Now she’s the undemocratically determined darling of the Democrats, a Bay Area progressive of Jamaican-Indian descent who grew up in Canada and whose ancestors were slaveowners. Furthermore, she’s apparently afraid to speak extemporaneously, and she’s flip-flopped on nearly every substantive issue under the sun. And then there’s her emotional support animal, Tim Walz, who himself is a deployment-dodging, valor-thieving, China-loving weirdo who dithered for three days before sending in the National Guard while Minneapolis burned.

But, yeah, let’s dig into a black Republican’s activities on an adult comment board from more than a decade ago. CNN gonna CNN.

“Mark Robinson,” reports CNN, “the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a ‘black NAZI!’ and expressed support for reinstating slavery.” The Most Trusted Name in News™ continues:

Despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric, Robinson said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, a review of archived messages found in which he also referred to himself as a “perv.”

The comments, which Robinson denies making, predate his entry into politics and current stint as North Carolina’s lieutenant governor. They were made under a username that CNN was able to identify as Robinson by matching a litany of biographical details and a shared email address between the two.

Apparently, Robinson also called Martin Luther King Jr. “Martin Lucifer Koon.”

Why would CNN sit on a salacious story about a black Republican gubernatorial candidate in a southern state until the very last day that he could exit the race and after ballots had already been printed? The question answers itself. What did CNN investigators know, and when did they know it? And where are Facebook’s censors, and why aren’t they protecting this black conservative like they protected white-privileged Hunter Biden ahead of the 2020 election?

On the other hand, is it too much to ask that the GOP apparatus do a better job of vetting its candidates?

Yesterday, four Robinson campaign staffers resigned in protest. As the Washington Examiner reports, “In an email, the Robinson campaign announced that Conrad Pogorzelski, senior adviser; Chris Rodriguez, campaign manager; Heather Whillier, finance director; and Jason Rizk, deputy campaign manager, have stepped down from their roles. The email noted that new campaign staff members will be announced ‘in the coming days.’”

These might just be opportunistic rats leaving the ship, and it’s hard to know what the up- and down-ballot implications will be here, but North Carolina is a crucial swing state, especially for Republicans. Trump is leading Harris narrowly there, but turnout will be key, and a de-energized Republican turnout could be decisive.

Said one North Carolinian, a keen political observer and a lifelong friend of yours truly: “Robinson appears to be a loose cannon. But I’ll still vote for him over anything Democrat. … Any other time, I might consider voting against him. Not now. He is the lesser of two evils, and the Democrats’ agenda is evil to the bone.”

We all make mistakes. We all do stupid things. But oftentimes, it’s what we do immediately afterward that matters. Imagine the result if Robinson, instead of offering up a see-through pseudo-denial, had leaned into his long-ago remarks and said, Yeah, I said some stupid things more than a decade ago, but I’m a different man now, a better man now, and we should be focused on the real issues that really matter to North Carolinians rather than a CNN hit piece.

Remember back years ago, when a 49-year-old Democrat president was preying on a 21-year-old White House intern, and Bill Clinton’s defenders accused Republicans of being obsessed with sex? Those were the days. These days, it’s the Democrats and their Leftmedia lickspittles who are obsessed with the lurid.

In defending himself last week, Robinson invoked the aforementioned black conservative icon: “Clarence Thomas once famously said, he was the victim of a high-tech lynching.”

True enough. But in this case, Robinson appears to have supplied his political enemies with the rope.