The Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina on Friday vowed to stay in post after a report that he posted strongly worded racial and sexual comments on an online message board.

The battleground state is expected to prove influential in the November White House election between former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris. 

What Robinson reportedly said

Mark Robinson said he would not be forced out by "salacious tabloid lies" after reports about his comments on the message board of a pornography website more than a decade ago.

Robinson, the sitting lieutenant governor who decisively won the Republican gubernatorial primary in March, has been trailing in several recent polls to current attorney general and Democratic nominee Josh Stein.

A CNN report described a series of racial and sexual comments from Robinson that were posted on the message board. The US broadcaster reported Robinson, who would become the first ever Black governor of North Carolina, had strongly attacked civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., on the forum.

He also once referred to himself as a "black NAZI," CNN said.

CNN added that Robinson wrote about his arousal at a memory of "peeping" at women in gym showers when he was 14 as well as an appreciation of transgender pornography.

At one point, CNN said, Robinson referred to himself as a "perv."

How the presidential campaigns reacted

The Harris campaign wasted no time in reminding the gubernatorial nominee's links to her Republican opponent, Donald Trump. 

In one X post, Harris' campaign played a video of clips of Trump praising Robinson that included calling him "better than Martin Luther King."

Another image showed Robinson and Trump standing together giving Trump's signature thumbs up pose.

Trump made no comment on the allegations in an address to a group of Jewish donors in Washington.

His campaign did issue a statement about the CNN story that did not mention Robinson, saying Trump was "focused on winning the White House and saving this country," with North Carolina as a "vital part of that plan."

Robinson's reported remarks, including a 2012 comment in which he said he preferred Adolf Hitler to the current US leadership, clashed with Trump's denunciations of antisemitism and his claim that Vice President Harris sympathized with the enemies of Israel.

rc/sms (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)