RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson will not speak or appear at former President Donald Trump’s rally Saturday in the eastern part of his state following a CNN report about his alleged posts on a pornography website’s message board, two people familiar with the matter said Friday.

Robinson has been a frequent presence at Trump’s North Carolina campaign stops. The Republican nominee has referred to Robinson, who is Black, as “Martin Luther King on steroids” and long praised him. But in the wake of Thursday’s CNN report, the Trump campaign issued a statement that didn’t mention Robinson and instead spoke generally about how North Carolina is key to the campaign’s efforts.

With the deadline to withdraw now passed, Robinson remained the Republican candidate for governor Friday. His decision to keep campaigning could threaten GOP prospects in other key races, including Trump’s efforts in a battleground state he twice won.

Robinson has denied writing the posts, which include racial and sexual comments. He said he wouldn’t be forced out of the race by “salacious tabloid lies.” While Robinson won his GOP gubernatorial primary in March, he’s been trailing in several recent polls to Democratic nominee Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general.

“Let me reassure you, the things that you will see in that story — those are not the words of Mark Robinson,” he said in a video released by his campaign. “You know my words. You know my character.”

State law says a gubernatorial nominee had until Thursday night to withdraw as a candidate, the day before the first absentee ballots requested by military and overseas voters are distributed. The State Board of Elections is unaware of any such withdrawal notice, spokesperson Pat Gannon said. State Republican leaders could have picked a replacement had a withdrawal occurred.

Robinson, 56, has a history of inflammatory comments that Stein has said made him too extreme to lead North Carolina. They already have contributed to the prospect that campaign struggles for Robinson could help Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris win the state’s 16 electoral votes.

“The fallout is going to be huge,” Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said Friday.

Losing swing district races for a congressional seat and the General Assembly would endanger the GOP’s control of the U.S. House and retaining veto-proof majorities at the legislature.

While the state Republican Party came to Robinson’s defense, individual GOP leaders raised concerns and suggested that Robinson needed to address the allegations more fully.

CNN reported that Robinson, who would be North Carolina’s first Black governor, attacked King, the civil rights leader, in searing terms and once referred to himself as a “black NAZI.” CNN also said Robinson wrote of “peeping” at women in gym showers when he was 14 along with an appreciation of transgender pornography.

The Associated Press has not independently confirmed that Robinson wrote and posted the messages. CNN said it matched details of the account on the pornographic website forum to other online accounts held by Robinson by comparing usernames, a known email address and his full name.

CNN reported that details discussed by the account holder matched Robinson’s age, length of marriage and other biographical information. It also compared figures of speech that came up frequently in his public Twitter profile that appeared in discussions by the account on the pornographic website.

Democrats jumped on Robinson and other Republicans after the report aired, using every opportunity to show on social media photos of Robinson with Trump or with other GOP candidates, attempting to tarnish them by association.