Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign plans to target former President Donald Trump in North Carolina by tying him to the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, whose alleged controversial comments on pornography sites were unearthed by a CNN report last week.
The memo, first obtained by Politico, says the campaign will target Trump and Robinson’s “long history of praising each other, campaigning alongside each other, and sharing the same toxic agenda.”
“North Carolina was already poised to be the Harris campaign’s top pickup opportunity after President Biden and Vice President Harris lost here by just over a point in 2020,” Harris campaign advisers Scott Falmlen and L.T. McCrimmon wrote in the memo. “The latest Robinson news creates even more opportunity in our campaign’s effort to reach suburban voters, moderate Republicans, and Black voters.”
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Robinson is currently dealing with the fallout from the CNN report on Thursday, which revealed that the GOP candidate allegedly described himself as a “Black Nazi” and claimed “slavery is not bad.”
The North Carolina lieutenant governor has denied the report, calling the report “salacious tabloid lies.”
But Democrats were quick to capitalize on the story, running an attack ad in the Tar Heel state only one day after the report was published.
The strategy document says Harris’ campaign will try to tie Trump to Robinson by highlighting their past statements on abortion, repealing the Affordable Care Act, and dismantling the Department of Education.
“This pair of MAGA Republicans are campaigning on the same extreme agenda and we have reams and reams of footage of the two of them embracing each other on the campaign trail,” the memo reads.
The report has led to widespread condemnation from Democrats, but a markedly less forceful response from Republicans, who have mostly resisted calling on him to immediately drop out of the race.
“If they’re true, he’s unfit to serve for office,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday morning. “If they’re not true, he has the best lawsuit in the history of the country for libel.”
