Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed he’s never heard of Mark Robinson, despite interviewing him earlier this year.
Robinson, North Carolina’s Republican candidate for governor, is fighting for his political career after a bombshell report by CNN’s KFile said he referred to himself as a “black Nazi” and said “slavery is good,” among other shocking remarks, on a porn forum.
Watters stayed mostly silent on The Five when the subject was brought up by co-host Jessica Tarlov, who described North Carolina as “a big target for the Democrats.”
She said: “And we just found out an hour ago that the lieutenant governor there, Mark Robinson, who’s running for governor…”
“Never heard of him,” Watters interrupted.
But the controversial host had actually interviewed Robinson in January on his show Jesse Watters Primetime. At the time, Robinson was interviewed by Watters regarding rumors Michelle Obama was running for office and whether Republicans “should be concerned” about her.
Ignoring Watters, Tarlov, who reeled off some of the shocking allegations made against Robinson, concluded: “This makes North Carolina even more in play for Democrats. And this, again, is evidence of the kind of candidates that Donald Trump thinks are good for the country.”
Earlier on Thursday, independent journalist Bryan Anderson had said that Robinson’s campaign was preparing for a negative story to break. A few hours later, CNN’s KFile reported that he had an account on a porn site called “Nude Africa” where the anti-transgender conservative admitted that “I like watching tranny on girl porn!”
The social conservative, who has taken a stance against promiscuity in the past, wrote: “yeah, I’m a perv too,” and reportedly said on the same site when told that a celebrity had had an abortion: “I don’t care. I just wanna see the sex tape!”
Robinson denies the allegations and told CNN that the account they had found on the porn site was not his.
The online comments were made between 2008 and 2012, long before Robinson stepped into politics, on Nude Africa, which has a message board. They were written under the username “minisoldr” which CNN matched to several biographical details as well as an email address.
The lieutenant governor denied making the comments when speaking to the network on Thursday.
“This is not us. These are not our words. And this is not anything that is characteristic of me,” he said. “I’m not going to get into the minutia of how somebody manufactured this, these salacious tabloid lies.”