CNN
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Offensive posts by North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson were removed from the pornography website Nude Africa on Thursday, just hours after a CNN KFile investigation uncovered a series of inflammatory comments posted on the forum by the controversial and socially conservative Republican candidate for North Carolina governor.

It is unclear whether the comments were removed by Robinson or Nude Africa administrators. Neither the Robinson campaign nor Nude Africa responded to CNN’s requests for comment.

Robinson denies making the comments, which he says were made between 2008 and 2012 – before he entered politics and his current term as lieutenant governor – and contradict his public stance on issues such as abortion and transgender rights.

Robinson listed his full name and an email address that he used on numerous websites across the Internet for decades in his profile on Nude Africa, a pornographic message board website.

The comments, many of which were gratuitously sexual and offensive in nature, were made under the username minisoldr, a nickname Robinson frequently used online. CNN was able to identify the username as Robinson by matching a litany of biographical details and a shared email address between the two.

Robinson’s posts included comments on issues such as race, gender and abortion. In some, he called himself a “black NAZI!” and advocated for the reinstatement of slavery. In others, he discussed his penchant for transgender pornography – despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric.

Following the revelations, pressure grew on Robinson to drop out of the race. Robinson is currently in a tight race against Democrat Josh Stein to succeed Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who is term-limited. But the deadline Robinson should have met under state law to remove his name from the ballot expired Thursday without him doing so, and the state’s first mail-in ballots were set to be mailed out Friday.

The swing state is a target of former President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

While the Harris team was quick to connect Trump with Robinson, posting photos of the two on social media, Trump’s team declined to comment Thursday on whether Robinson should drop out of the race for governor.

“President Trump’s campaign is focused on winning the White House and saving this country. North Carolina is an essential part of that plan,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement that did not directly address the reporting.

“We are confident that President Trump will win the Tarheel State again as voters compare Trump’s record of a strong economy, low inflation, a secure border and safe streets with the failures of Biden-Harris. We will not lose sight of the bigger picture,” Leavitt continued.

The former president expressed his support for Robinson at an event in North Carolina earlier this year, calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”