Vance, Declining to Denounce Robinson, Lashes Out at Media Instead

Senator JD Vance of Ohio lashed out at the news media on Monday as he campaigned in North Carolina, deflecting questions about a scandal engulfing the campaign of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the embattled Republican running for governor in the state.

Mr. Vance, who has previously cast doubt on a CNN report linking Mr. Robinson to disturbing comments on a pornographic forum, avoided mentioning the lieutenant governor during a campaign rally in Charlotte. When pressed by journalists, he declined to denounce Mr. Robinson but said the onus would be on him to convince voters that he didn’t make the posts, in which the report says he called himself a “black NAZI” and defended slavery.

“What he said or didn’t say is between him and the people of North Carolina,” said Mr. Vance, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate. He added: “I’ve seen some of the statements. I haven’t seen them all. Some of them are pretty gross, to put it mildly. Mark Robinson says that those statements are false, that he didn’t actually speak them. So I think it’s up to Mark Robinson to make his case to the people of North Carolina that those weren’t his statements.”

As audience members booed and jeered the local journalists asking Mr. Vance about Mr. Robinson, with many standing up in their seats and turning around to shout at the press gathered in the back of the venue, Mr. Vance shifted his focus there as well.

“This entire episode illustrates something that is fundamentally broken about the American media,” Vance said, later comparing the gathered journalists to “supermarket tabloids” and adding “I really cannot believe that the American media is so much more focused on this than on the struggles of their fellow citizens.”

But Mr. Vance brushed aside