Letter from DC: ‘A historic election by any measure’ just got a lot more sleazy

The 2024 US election has seen its share of historic events: Donald Trump survived two apparent assassination attempts; his opponent Joe Biden staged an unprecedented late withdrawal from the race, opening the way for the rise of what could be the country’s first black woman President; and Trump became the first convicted felon to run for office as the candidate of a major political party.

All it lacked was a fresh sex scandal – and this week it got a threesome.

First up was Mark Robinson, the anti-gay evangelical firebrand and Republican Gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina who Trump had endorsed as “Martin Luther King on steroids”.

Robinson, the current Lieutenant-Governor of North Carolina, was exposed by CNN as having once been a habitue of a porn website called Nude Africa where he revealed himself as a bisexual black Nazi who believes that slavery was a good thing.

Then, after journalists discovered one of Robinson’s emails in the database dump of the Ashley Madison site for married people seeking discreet sexual affairs, they dug further and found the email of the conservative anti-immigrant activist Chris Rufo, notorious for fanning racial division, panic and backlash at schools over the teaching of “critical race theory.”

Then, New York magazine suspended one of its stars, the writer Olivia Nuzzi, for not disclosing a “personal” relationship she had with Robert F Kennedy Junior, the former third party candidate and anti-vaxxer who she covered and wrote about.

Nuzzi was slagging off Biden in print even as she was engaging in a relationship, the exact nature of which remains unclear, with one of his political rivals. Older South Africans might recognise this as Jani Allen syndrome after the journalist who developed an attachment to the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging leader Eugene Terre ‘Blanche.

Kennedy, who is 40 years older than Nuzzi and has moved into the Trump camp in the hope of a cabinet spot running the country’s health services, once responded to allegations that he had hit on his children’s nanny by conceding that he was “not a choirboy”.

Not to be outdone, Trump himself veered close to yet another skandaal when he appeared to be more than a bit fond of the Islamophobic conspiracy nut Laura Loomer, who has warned that the White House will smell of curry if Kamala Harris wins the election. Loomer flew with Trump to his ill-fated debate with Harris, stirring jealousy among his camp followers.

Loomer threatened to sue the comic Bill Maher for pointing out “she’s 31 and looks his type” - and Trump’s wife Melania has been conspicuously absent from the campaign trail.

Loomer has since been barred from Trump’s plane and any physical contact with the former President, and the matter has been tightly sealed up by his aides.

All this sleaze and hypocrisy could be dismissed as tabloid fodder, but the Robinson saga could jeopardise Trump’s re-election.

Robinson vociferously denied the charges, claiming to be the victim of a leftwing “lynching”, but the CNN identifiers proving that the anonymous user of the website was Robinson appear credible.

The story only came to light because the Republican Party launched a last-ditch attempt to force Robinson off the ballot to limit the damage to Trump at the top of the ticket. The deadline was Thursday night, and Robinson’s continued presence on the ballot will now haunt the Republicans until election day.

Some pro-choice Democrats took pleasure in suggesting that the Republicans would be forced to carry him to term.

Still, it must be more than uncomfortable for starched-shirt Republicans to be stuck supporting a man who hung out on porn sites, scribbling things like: “I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f*ing hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!”

Robinson, who parades as a crusader against gays and transgender people in public life, added: “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”

The North Carolina Republican Party, the majority of whose members are white evangelical Christians, nominated Robinson with 65 % of the vote, even though he had already openly expressed views that were only marginally less vile.

Robinson said he “absolutely wants to go back to the America where women can’t vote” and told a church congregation that “some folks need killing” as a “matter of necessity.”

The local Republican Party also nominated, for superintendent of public schools, Michele Morrow, a former missionary who has called for the execution of Obama and other Democratic Party leaders.

North Carolina has been won only once by Democrats in almost 50 years - when Barack Obama took it in 2008 - but Harris has drawn level and even pushed slightly ahead in recent weeks, while Robinson lags ten points behind the Democrats’ Josh Stein in the race for Governor. If Trump loses the state, it could cost him the election.

An impressive grassroots Democratic campaign is being led by 26-year-old Democratic star Anderson Clayton, the youngest party chair in the country, who is at the forefront of building a new multiracial Deep South. Forty percent of the population of North Carolina are black, Hispanic, native American or Asian.

Trump, endangered in North Carolina, is already trying to put distance between himself and Robinson, yet Robinson is a product of the anger, hatred and grievance of Trump’s Maga Republican Party.

Trump’s running mate J D Vance has been out on the campaign trail scapegoating a community of legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, in what is probably the most racist campaign since that of the segregationist George Wallace in 1968.

Just about every word that Trump and Vance have said on the subject is a lie, starting with Trump’s now infamous claim at the September 10 debate that the Haitians have been eating dogs and cats in Springfield.

The Wall Street Journal traced the origin of the urban legend to a woman whose cat, Miss Sassy, went missing. She suspected it had been taken by her Haitian neighbours but it was later found safe and sound hiding in her basement. She claims she apologised, by text, to the neighbours.

Even though their claims have been refuted by the Republican Governor of the state and the Mayor of the town, Trump and Vance are still doubling and tripling down on the lies that have spawned bomb threats, school closures, marches by extremists, and brought the national guard out on the streets while leaving a fearful and embattled Haitian community.

Trump now claims he is going to tour Springfield, where he will no doubt perform his familiar routine in which the arsonist arrives to put out the fire.

Campaign spokesmen claim that the Springfield storyline helps them by keeping the focus on Biden and Harris allegedly allowing open borders and uncontrolled immigration of dangerous criminals to come prey on vulnerable communities.

This appeal to white fear and prejudice - along with a slick and highly targeted advertising blitz in the swing states - could yet get Trump across the line in November.

But it represents the collapse of any remaining intellectual, moral or strategic vision, or any fidelity to the truth, as Trump’s disintegrating mind wanders into strange new territories.

On Thursday night, at an anti-Semitism event, he went on a rant against Jewish people, saying they ought to have their heads examined if they voted for the Democrats. “If I don’t win this election, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with that,” he said.

You know what they say? When all else fails, blame the Jews. DM