Mark Robinson teased a big admission, but it felt more like a reminder | Opinion
Mark Robinson, the former lieutenant governor who has stayed relatively quiet since his failed gubernatorial campaign in 2024, is back and ready to “tell the truth.”
In a new podcast episode titled “Mark Robinson Finally Admits It,” Robinson admitted Thursday to an “obsession” with pornography and sex, and he acknowledged that he lied back in 2024 when a CNN report uncovered lewd and racist remarks he had previously made on a porn forum.
He did so then, he said, in order to protect Trump’s campaign.
Even in his honesty, Robinson remained defensive, and he seemed to believe that he did something righteous by lying. Even though he wanted to own up to it, he said, other people would be affected, so it would be “selfish” to be truthful.
“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.”
Seriously?
Though he admitted feeling regret following his 2024 loss, Robinson said he does not regret lying and would make the same decision again. Instead, one of his “biggest regrets” was not changing his staff earlier in the campaign, because if he had, he would’ve won, he said.
This all seems to be a rather recent epiphany for Robinson, given that just eight months ago, Robinson appeared on a different podcast and denied CNN’s report, calling it “fake news.” Even if it were true, he said then, what’s so bad about a grown man watching pornography in the privacy of his own home?
In that sense, yes, Robinson is right. But the reason why Robinson was unfit for public office, and the reason why he lost the election, isn’t because he used to watch porn, or even that he lied about it. It’s that he used the porn forum to say vile things, including “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves” and “I’m a black NAZI!”
Frankly, Robinson’s real problem is best summed up in his own words: “I always kind of think of things in terms of combat.” Mark Robinson is divisive. He’s combative. He sees politics as war and his political opponents as enemies. He uses his words as a weapon, deploying them to vilify marginalized communities and anyone else he deems a threat. No matter how much self-reflection he says he’s done, it’s clear that he still views this as a virtue rather than a shortcoming.
In Thursday’s podcast, Robinson said that the hardest part about lying was that the CNN report made him seem like someone he wasn’t, and he wasn’t able to show people “who I really am.” But we had already seen who Robinson really was long before that. The racism, the homophobia, the misogyny and the antisemitism wasn’t limited to the posts he made on a porn forum 16 years ago. They were also visible on the campaign trail, in his sermons and on his public social media accounts.
And now we might be in store for more. Robinson’s public proclamation suggests he might not want the public part of his life to be over. Maybe he will run for office again someday, or maybe he just sees himself as a voice that people still want to hear. But like it or not, he’s not going away, and if this interview proved anything, it’s that he hasn’t changed much, either. This big “admission” was really more of a reminder.
Deputy Opinion Editor Paige Masten is covering politics and the 2026 elections for The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer.
This story was originally published March 20, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
