Pressure mounts on Mark Robinson from all sides after porn site scandal

More and more mainstream Republican officials are calling on Mark Robinson, their party’snominee for governor in North Carolina, to sue CNN if he really believes a damning report about his history of comments on an online porn site is false or step aside in the race.

Robinson was trailing his Democratic opponent, Josh Stein, before the release of the report on Thursday. CNN's article uncovered a deep history of shocking and outrageous comments apparently made by Robinson on a porn site years before he entered politics.

In the comments, the account linked to an email address and username known to be used by the Lt. Governor described himself as a “Black Nazi” while making graphic descriptions of his sexual preferences.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham became the latest GOP lawmaker to call on Robinson to prove his claim that CNN is lying about him on Sunday, as the leading Republican spoke on NBC’s Meet the Press.

“What I would do if I were him, I would hire me the best lawyer I could find. I’d sue the hell out of CNN because what they’re saying about him is just unbelievable,” said the senator. «The charges are beyond unnerving. If they're true, he's unfit to serve.»

Graham’s urgings echoed those of Thom Tillis, a senator from North Carolina, who has called on Robinson to quit the race for governor if he can’t prove the claims are false.

“If the reporting on Mark Robinson is a total media fabrication, he needs to take immediate legal action,” Tillis wrote on Friday in a Twitter post. “If the reporting is true, he owes it to President Trump and every Republican to take accountability for his actions and put the future of NC & our party before himself.”

Republicans have been privately panicking about Robinson for